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EYES AND EAKS. 



BY 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 




BO STON: 
TICK NOR AND FIELDS. 

1864. 






E^ 



]2io'r 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 

HENRY WARD BEECHER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 



FIFTH EDITIOxV. 



P 



1-5 



S^ 



University Press: 
Wkloh, Biqelow, and Compant, 
Cambridge. 




HE papers in this volume are reprinted, with a 
few exceptions, from the New York Ledger, 
where they appeared, under the title of " Thoughts 
as they Occur, by one who keeps his Eyes and Ears open." 
Besides these, a few have been taken from the New York 
Independent. 

Nothing could be less studied or pretentious than these 
papers, thrown off almost as rapidly as a photograph is 
printed, and representing the impressions of happy hours, 
or the moods and musings of the moment. They are frag- 
mentary, and as careless as even a newspaper style will 
permit. 

If they serve to inspire a love of Nature, or an enjoy- 
ment of rural occupations, or to form a kindly habit of 
judging men and events, or if they even serve only to 
enliven the tedium of sickness, or while away a summer 
hour with innocent amusement, they will answer the au- 
thor's utmost expectations. 

H. W. B. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOB 

Modern Conveniences and First-Class Houses ... 1 

The Dog Noble, and the Empty Hole 10 

Litchfield Revisited . .14 

Phrenology 20 

Letters from the Country 26 

Hours of Exaltation 32 

First Summer Letter 38 

Second Summer Letter .....•.• 41 

Snow Power 45 

The Mountain Farm to the Sea-Side Farm .... 49 

Haying 58 

Mowing-Machines and Steam-Ploughs 65 

City Boys in the Country 71 

A Time at the White Mountains 79 

Our First Experience with a Sewing-Machine ... 85 

Hunting Flies 89 

Back again 91 

A Western Trip 96 

The Lecture System . . . . * . . . . 102 

Home Revisited . 109 

How to wake in the Morning 114 

Letter from the Country . . . . • • • . 118 

Weeds in Pictures 122 

The Right Kind of Farming 125 

Are Birds worth their Keeping? 130 

Country Stillness and Woodchucks 137 

A Cannon-Ball in the Hat 141 

My Pockets 145 

Joys and Sorrows of Eggs 149 

The Duty of owning Books 154 

My Property 156 



VI CONTEXTS. 

Men need what they do yor waxt ... , . 161 

CoxscLTixG AX Echo 164 

The Virtue a:nt) Fanaticism cj Neatness , . . . 167 

Niagara Falls, but xot Described 173 

Neat Dressing is not Clean Housekeeping .... ISl 

Our First Fishing 1S5 

Reading 1S7 

Summer Heading 190 

AVOKTH OF MoNEr 192 

Pet Notions 195 

Reasons for not writing an Article 199 

Health and Education 203 

On the Pleasures of being a Public Majj- .... 207 

Chimney-Swallows 211 

The Farm 215 

The Highway of' the People 218 

Asking Advice, and Oxen 221 

The Office of Art 225 

Free Town Libraries 230 

Honor your Busint:ss . 233 

Moths, Winged ant> Legged 236 

Boston Reminiscences . , . 239 

Object Lessons 243 

Character and Reputation 246 

Good-Nature 249 

Atple-Pie . . ." 251 

Straightening the Lines 255 

Talking 258 

Art among the People 262 

Sliding doavn Hill 266 

Gambijng 270 

Winter Beauty 273 

Street Cries ant) Orators' Voices 278 

Be Generous of Beauty 2S1 

Tr^uling Arbutus 2S5 

Morals of Bargains 288 '' 

Outlandish Books 290 

The Dandelion and I 294 

Oral Farming 299 

Dry Fishing 302 

Apple-Trees in Love . . 307 

Genius and Industry 310 

New Clothes 313 

Worms .... 317 

Pleasure-Riding 321 

Summer Rain . 324 



CONTENTS. 



Vll 



My Two Friends 327 

Embodied Jokes 331 

Changes 333 

Driving Fast Horses fast 337 

Fence-Corners 340 

Agricultural Paper 344 

The Pumpkin Family. — Its Relatives and Rivals . . 348 

Autumn Colors 355 

Our Housekeeping Experience 357 

Solitude: Wasps 363 

Food Discoveries 368 

Good-Natured People 372 

Strawberries and Cream 875 

Life of Flowers 378 

Childhood and Disenchantment 383 

My Picture-Gallery 386 

Fairy Music 390 

MosQuiTos. No. 2 394 

Book-Keeping 396 

Speaking-Halls 400 

Conversational Faults 403 

Boots 406 

Compliments 408 

Smell and Perfumery '. 410 

The Good of Disorder 413 




EYES AND EARS. 



MODERN CONVENIENCES AND FIRST-CtASS 
HOUSES. 




HERE are many persons who suppose that 



people who live in first-class houses, with all 
the modern improvements, must of course 
be much pufied up, and that they become 
quite grand in their own eyes. It is true, sometimes, 
that fine houses have proud people in them. We 
can imagine a pride so reluctant of discipline, and 
so indocile, as to survive in spite of the experience 
of a first-class house. But we suspect the same of 
very poor tenements. 

When we moved into a capacious brown-stone 
dwelling, our better nature, with great simplicity. 



whispered, " Beware of temptation." And, with an 
ignorance quite as simple, we supposed that the 
thieves of grace would be found lurking in large 
rooms, at ambush behind cornices reproduced from 
old Rome, or in stately appearances ! How little did 
we suspect that these were harmless, and that very 
different elements were to moth our patience ! 

But let a little preliminary exultation of a new 
man in a new place be forgiven, ye who are now 

1 A 



2 EYES AND EARS. 

established! Eemember your own hoiiseliold fervof 
on first setting up, while we recount our economic joy, 
and anticipations of modern conveniences that would 
take away all human care, and speed life upon a down- 
hill path, where it was to be easier to move than to 
stand istill ! Everything was admirable ! The attic 
had within it a tank so large as better to be called a 
reservoir. Down from it ran the serviceable pipes to 
every part of the dwelling. Each chamber had its 
invisible water-maid in the wall, ready to spring the 
floods upon you by the mere turn of your hand ; then 
the bath-room, with tub, douche, shower, and indeed 
various and universal squirt, — up, down, and promis- 
cuous. The kitchen, too, — the tubs with water wait- 
ing to leap into them, the long cylinder by the side of 
the fire, as if the range had its baby wrapped up, and 
set perpendicular in the corner to nurse. But great- 
est of all admirations was the furnace ! This, too, 
was interframed with the attic tank ; for it was a 
hot-water furnace. For a time this was our peculiar 
pride. The water flowed down into a system of coiled 
tubes, which were connected with the boiler surround- 
ing the furnace fire. The idea was, when the water 
got as hot as it could well bear, that it should frisk 
out of one end of the boiler into the pipes, and round 
through the whole system, and come back into the 
other end cooled off. Thus a complete arterial system 
was established, — the boiler being the heart, the water 
the blood, the pipes at the hot end the arteries, and 
the return pipes at the cool end the veins ; — the 
whole enclosed in a brick chamber, from which the 
air warmed by this liquid heat was given off to the 
dwelling. It was a day of great glory when we 



MODERN CONVENIENCES AND FIRST-CLASS HOUSES. 3 

thought the chill in the air required a fire in the 
furnace. The fact was that we wanted to play with 
our pet, and were half vexed with the old conserva- 
tive thermometer, that would not come down, and 
admit that it was cold enough for a fire. However, 
we do not recollect ever afterwards to have been so 
eager. 

In the first place, we never could raise enough heat 
to change the air in the house more than from cold 
to chill. We piled in the coal, and watched the ther- 
mometer ; ran down for coal again, and ran back to 
watch the thermometer. We brought home coal, 
exchanged glances over the bill with the consulting 
partner, and made silent estimates of the expenses 
of the whole winter, if this were but the beginning. 
But there was the old red dragon in the cellar devour- 
ing coal remorselessly, with his long iron tail folded 
and coiled in the furnace chamber without heat. 
Thus, for a series of weeks, we fired off the furnace 
in the cellar at the thermometer in the parlor, and 
never hit. But we did accomplish other things. 
Once the fire was driven so hard that steam bei2;an 
to form and rumble and blow off, very innocently ; 
but the girls did not know that, and took to their 
heels for fear of being blown up. When the cause 
was discovered, the remedy was not easy, for the 
furnace bottom was immovable, and the fire could 
not be let down. But our Joan of Arc assailed the 
enemy in his own camp, and threw a bucket of water 
into the fire.- This produced several effects ; it put 
out the fire, it also put out so much gas, steam, and 
ashes that the maiden was quite put out also. And 
more than all, it cracked the boiler. But this we did 



4 " EYES AND EARS. 

not know till some time afterwards. There were a 
few days of comparative rest. The weather was mild 
out of doors, and cold within. It was soon reported 
that one of the pipes was stopped np in the chamber, 
for the water would not flow. The plumber was sent 
for. He was already well acquainted with the way 
to the house* He brought upon himself a laugh of 
ridicule by suggesting that the water had given out 
in the tank ! Water given out ? We turned m- 
wardly pale behind the outward red of laughing. 
We thought we had a pocket-ocean up stairs. Up 
we marched, climbed up the sides, peered down to 
the dirty bottom of an emptied tank ! Alas ! the 
w4iole house was symmetrically connected. Every- 
thing depended upon this tank ; the furnace in the 
cellar, the range in the kitchen, the laundry depart- 
ment, all the washhig apparatus of the chambers, 
the convenient china-closet sink, where things were 
to be washed without going down stairs, the entry 
closets, and almost everything else, except the door- 
bell, were made to go by water, and now the universal 
motive power was gone ! A new system of con- 
yeniences was now developed. We stationed an Irish 
engine at the force-pump to throw up water into the 
tank from the street cistern. Blessings be on that 
cistern in the street ! No man knew how deep that 
was. Like the pond in every village, nobody had 
ever found bottom. And so we limped along for a 
few days. Meanwhile, the furnace having been ex- 
amined, the secret of all this trouble was detected. 
The life-blood of the house had been oozing and flow- 
ing away through this furnace ! How much would 
it cost to repair it? More money than a hot-air 



MODERN CONVENIENCES AND FIEST-CLASS HOUSES. 5 

furnace wouM cost, and half more than that ! So we 
determined to clear out the pet. Alas, (again,) how 
we Tondled the favorite at first, and how contemptu- 
ously we kicked it at last ! It is said that no one is 
a whole man ; we have partial gifts. In our own 
case, the gift of buying was liberally bestowed, but 
the talent for selling was either withheld or lay an 
undeveloped embryo. How to sell the old furnace 
and to get a new one ! There is a great psychological 
experience there. We aroused ourselves, gave several 
days to contemplation, laid aside all other cares, ran 
from furnace to furnace, saw six or eight patterns, 
each one of which was better than all the others, and 
aU of them were able to evolve vast quantities of heat, 
with an imaginary amount of fuel. But fortune, that 
had so long persecuted us, did not presume to destroy 
us yet, and, as a cat with a rat, let us out of its paws 
for a moment's ease. In other words, we arranged 
with Messrs. Richardson & Boynton to put ^heir fur- 
nace in the place of the hot-air gentleman in black. 
And to this hour we have been glad of it. A winter 
and a half on Brooklyn Heights will put any furnace 
to proof. And we are prepared to defy the north 
wind, the west, or the boisterous southwest. They 
may heap winter as high as they please without, we 
have summer within. 

But the changing! It was mid-winter. The 
mild weather took this chance to go South, and got 
in its place the niggardliest fellow that ever stood sen- 
tinel in Kamtschatka. The cellar was divided from 
the kitchen in part by this furnace. For two or three 
weeks they were chiselling the tubes apart, and getting 
the rubbish out of the way ; — masons, tenders, iron- 



6 EYES AND EAES. 

men, old iron and new iron, tin pipes, carpenters, and 
new air-boxes, girls and dinner, the Irishman wheez* 
ing at the pump, — all mixed in such confusion, 
that language under the tower of Babel was a eupho- 
nious literature in comparison. Sometimes, as we 
walked out, our good and loving, deacons, in a delicate 
way, would warn us of the danger of being puffed up 
with the pride of a stylish house ! 

At length, after nearly six weeks of the coldest 
weather of the season, the new furnace took charge 
of the house. Water returned to the attic. The 
girls no longer dreaded being blown up by the boiler 
at the range. But the report came up that the sinks 
were stopped. After investigation, the kitchen floor 
must be ripped up, the great waste-pipe reached by 
digging, and laid open. Broken tumblers, plates, and 
cups stopped up the pipes. Another week for this. 
Just as we were sitting down to a dangerous peace, 
we walked to the window one morning, to see that our 
yard had disappeared ! The roof of the store on 
which it was laid had given way, and carried down 
all the earth, crashing through the four stories to the 
ground ! Just one thing more was needed, — that the 
house itself should slide off bodily, and dump itself 
into the East River! Yet the misfortune was not 
without comfort. The store was used for grinding 
drugs. Ten thousand pounds of salts, ipecac, rhu- 
barb, strychnine, and such like delicacies, were hid- 
den beneath a hundred tons of earth, — the medicine 
being, where many people for whom it was destined 
would have been, buried under ground. For several 
weeks afterwards, I think the bills of mortality im 
proved in the region around. 



MODERN CONVENIENCES AND FIEST-CLASS HOUSES. 7 

There were a great number of other things exceed- 
ingly convenient in our house. The water-pipe from 
the roof to the front cistern was carried down within 
the wall to the ground. The bitter cold froze it up. 
Nobody could get at it. We salted it, we poked hot 
irons into the tap, we took counsel, and finally let it 
alone. The cornice leaked, the walls were damp, the 
ceiling threatened to come off; our neighbor's pipe 
discharged so much of its contents on the ground as 
to saturate the wall in our basement entry, the area 
overflowed into the cellar, we dug a cess-pool to let it 
off, and cut through the cistern pipe leading to the 
kitchen pump. It could not be soldered with water 
in it, and the cistern must be run dry before that 
could be fixed. The attic tank gave out again. No 
water ! 

" Water, water everywhere, 
And not a drop " — 

to wash with. Then came on a system of begging. 
We took the neighborhood in order, and went from 
house to house, till we exhausted the patience and 
the cisterns of every friend within reach. Then we 
betook ourselves to the street pump, and for two 
months we and the milkman subsisted upon that. 

There was a grand arrangement of bells at our 
front door which seldom failed to make everybody out- 
side mad because they would not ring, or everybody 
inside mad because they rang so furiously. The con- 
trivance was, that two bells should be rung by one 
wire ; a common bell in the servants' entry, and a 
gong in the upper entry. The bell-train was so heavy 
to draw, that it never operated till the man got angry 
and pulled with the strength of an ox. But then it 



8 EYES AND EARS. 

went off with such a crash and jingle, that one would 
think a band of music with all its cymbals had fallen 
through the skj-light down into the entry. Thus, 
women, children, and modest men seldom got in, and 
sturdy beggars had it all their own way. It was 
quite edifying to see experiments performed on that 
bell. A man would first give a modest pull, — and 
then reflect what he was about to say. No one com- 
ing, he gave a longer pull, and returned to waiting 
and meditation. A third pull was the preface to step- 
ping back, surveying the windows, looking into the 
area, when, seeing signs of unquestionable habitation, 
he returns with flushed face to the bell ; — now for it ! 
He pulls as if he held a line by the side of a river 
with a thirty-pound salmon on it ; While all the bells 
go off, up and down, till the house seemed full of 
bells. Things are not mended when he finds the 
gentleman of the house is not at home ! We fear 
that much grace has been lost at that front door. 

In the midst of these luxuries of a first-class house, 
we sometimes would look wistfully out of the window, 
tempted to envy the unconscious happiness of our 
two-story neighbors. They had no conveniences^ and 
were at peace ; while we had all manner of conven- 
iences, that drove us up and down stairs ; — now to 
keep the flood out, and then to bring it in ; now to 
raise a heat, then to keep off a conflagration, so that 
we were but little better off at home than are those 
innocently insane people who leave home every sum- 
mer, and go into the country to take care of twenty 
trunks for two months. But the cruellest thing of all, 
as we stood at the window, was the pious looks of 
passers-by, who seemed to say with their eyes, '' A 



MODERN CONVENIENCES AND FIRST-CLASS HOUSES. 9 

man cannot expect mucli grace that lives in such a 
fine house." 

It has certainly been a means of grace to us ! Never 
such a field for patience, such humbling of expecta- 
tions and high looks. If it would not seem like 
trifling with serious subjects, when asked how one 
might attain to perfection, we should advise him to 
buy a first-class house with modern improvements, 
and live in it for a year. If that did not fit him for 
translation, he might well despair of any chance. 

Ye who envy us, will you exchange with us ? Ye 
who laugh sarcastically at ministerial luxury, will you 
lend us your sackcloth and take our conveniences ? 
But those who do live in houses full of conveniences 
will henceforth be our fast friends. They will say. 
What if he is abolitionist, and we pro-slavery ? What 
if he is radical, and we conservative ? The poor 
fellow lives in a first-class house, and is punished 
enough without our adding to his misfortunes ! 

Meanwhile we practise the same charity. We rail 
no more at Fifth Avenue, and admire what saintly 
virtue enables so many to carry cheerful faces, who 
live in houses with even more conveniences than ours. 
We are grateful for our happier lot. Though we are 
worse off" than people in two-story houses, how much 
better are we placed than if we lived in Fifth Avenue ! 

We bear our burden patiently, knowing that in the 
very moment of despair persons are at the very point 
of deliverance. Who knows but he may have a fire 
as well as his neighbors? One hour would suffice to 
set a man free from all his troubles, and permit him 
to walk the streets at liberty, unharassed by plumb- 
ers, carpenters, tinners, glaziers, gas-fixers, carpet- 
1* 



10 EYES AND EYES. 

fitters, bell-hangers, and the whole tribe of bell- 
pullers ! 

We are now living at peace. We are in a plain 
two-story country house, without " conveniences." 
We are recruiting. Nothing gets out of order. We 
do not wake to hear water trickling from bursted 
pipes ; we have no chandelier to fall down ; the gas 
never leaks ; we are not afraid to use our furniture ; 
our chairs have no linen clothes on ; the carpets are 
without drugget. The children bless the country and 
a country house, in which they are not always scratch- 
ing something, or hitting something with shoe, or 
button, or finger-nails. And we already feel that a 
few weeks more will so far invigorate us that we shall 
be able to return for a ten months' life in a modern 
house with conveniences, 

* 




THE DOG NOBLE, AND THE EMPTY HOLE. 

August 7, 1856. 

HE first summer which we spent in Lenox, 
we had along a very intelligent dog, named 
Noble. He was learned in many things, 
and by his dog-lore excited the undying ad- 
miration of all the children. But there were some 
things which Noble could never learn. Having on 
one occasion seen a red squirrel run into a hole in a 
stone wall, he could not be persuaded that he was not 
there forevermore. 

Several. red squirrels lived close to the house, and 



THE DOG NOBLE, AND THE EMPTY HOLE. 11 

had become familiar, but not tame. They kept up a 
regular romp with Noble. They would come down 
from the maple-trees with provoking coolness ; they 
would run along the fence almost within reach ; they 
would cock their tails and sail across the road to the 
barn ; and yet there was such a well-timed calculation 
under all this apparent rashness, that Noble invariably 
arrived at the critical spot just as the squirrel left it. 

On one occasion Noble was so close upon his red- 
backed friend that, unable to get up the maple-tree, 
he dodged into a hole in the wall, ran through the 
chinks, emerged at a little distance, and sprung into 
the tree. The intense enthusiasm of the dog at that 
hole can hardly be described. He filled it full of 
barking. He pawed and scratched as if undermining 
a bastion. Standing off at a little distance, he would 
pierce the hole with a gaze as intense and fixed as if 
he were trying magnetism on it. Then, with tail 
extended, and, every hair thereon electrified, he would 
rush at the empty hole with a prodigious onslaught. 

This 'imaginary squirrel haunted Noble night and 
day. The very squirrel himself would run up before 
his face into the tree, and, crouched in a crotch, would 
sit silently watching the whole process of bombarding 
the empty hole, with great sobriety and relish. But 
Noble would allow of no doubts. His conviction that 
that hole had a squirrel in it continued unshaken for 
six weeks. When all other occupations failed, this hole 
remained to him. When there were no more chickens 
to harry, no pigs to bite, no cattle to chase, no chil- 
dren to romp with, no expeditions to make with the 
grown folks, and when he had slept all that his dog- 
skin would hold, he would walk out of the yard, yawn 



12 EYES AND EAKS. 

and stretch himself, and then look wistfully at the 
hole, as if thinking to himself, " Well, as there is 
nothing else to do, I may as well try that hole again ! " 

We had. almost forgotten this little trait, until the 
conduct of the New York Express, in respect to 
Colonel Fremont's religion, brought it ludicrously to 
mind again. Colonel Fremont is, and always has 
been, as sound a Protestant as John Knox ever was. 
He was bred in the Protestant faith, and has never 
changed. He is unacquainted with the doctrines and 
ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and has never 
attended the services of that Church, with two or 
three exceptions, when curiosity, or some extrinsic 
reason, led him as a witness. We do not state this 
upon vague belief. We know what we say. We say 
it upon our own personal honor and proper knowl- 
edge. Colonel Fremont never was, and is not now, a 
Roman Catholic. He has never been wont to attend 
that Church. Nor has he in any way, directly or in- 
directly, given occasion for this report. 

It is a gratuitous falsehood, — utter, barren, abso- 
lute, and unqualified. The story has been got up for 
political effect. It is still circulated for that reason, 
and, like other political lies, it is a sheer, unscrupu- 
lous falsehood, from top to bottom, from the core to 
the skin, and from the skin back to the core again. 
In all its parts, in pulp, tegument, rind, cell, and 
seed, it is a thorough and total untruth, and they who 
spread it bear false witness. And as to all the stories 
of the Fulmer, etc., as to supposed conversations with 
Fremont, in which he defended the mass, and what 
not, they are pure fictions. They never happened. 
The authors of them are slanderers ; the men to be* 



THE DOG NOBLE, AND TI^E EMPTY HOLE. 13 

lieve them are dupes ; the men who spread them 
become indorsers of wilful and corrupt libellers. 

But the Express^ like Noble, has opened on this 
hole in the wall, and can never be done barking at it. 
Day after day it resorts to this empty hole. When 
everything else fails, this resource remains. There 
they are, indefatigably, — the Express and Noble, — a 
church without a Fremont, and a hole without a 
squirrel in it ! 

In some respects, however, the dog had the advan- 
tage. Sometimes we thought that he really believed 
that there was a squirrel there. But at other times 
he apparently had an inkling of the ridiculousness of 
his conduct, for he would drop his tail, and walk 
towards us with his tongue out, and his eyes a little 
aslant, seeming to say : " My dear sir, you don't 
understand a dog's feelings. I should of course much 
prefer a squirrel, but if I can't have that, an empty 
hole is better than nothing. I imagine how I would 
catch him if he was there. Besides, people who pass 
by don't know the facts. They think that I have got 
something. It is needful to keep up my reputation 
for sagacity. Besides, to tell the truth, I have looked 
into that hole so long that I have half persuaded 
myself that there is a squirrel there, or will be, if I 
keep on." 

Well, every dog must have his day, and every dog 
must have his way. No doubt if we were to bring 
back Noble now, after two summers' absence, he 
would make straight for that hole in the wall with 
just as much zeal as ever. 

We never read the Express^ now-a-days, without 
thinking involuntarily, " Goodness ! the dog is letting 
off at that hole a^ain," ^ 



14 EYES AND EARS. 



LITCHFIELD KEVISITED. 




HE progression of life is so simple, and, in 
the greatest number of persons, so quiet, 
that men only know, at lengtli, that they 
are changed, but seldom perceive the pro- 
cess of changing. We know that we are no longer 
boys, but cannot tell when we crossed the line. We 
are conscious that we have reached manhood, and 
that youth has departed. But so gently did it go, 
that we are as those who listen to a bird singing in 
a tree. After it has flown, they listen still, and only 
know its flight because it no longer sings. 

But now and then we are turned back, and brought 
face to face with the past, in such a way that two lives 
gaze at each other ; and we walk as if one identity 
had two expressions. 

The recollections of the past beat upon the heart, 
and we stood in its door, as a parent to whom comes 
back the child not seen for scores of years, uncertain 
whether to doubt or to accept the familiar strangeness. 
After long absence, let any one revisit the scenes of 
his childhood home, and see whether these things be 
not so. There will be a soft bewilderment, a sad joy 
of excitement, which, perhaps, one may not be able 
to analyze, but which is, in fact, the flowing together 
of the two great streams of life, the past and the 
present. 

Surely, Old Litchfield was a blessed place for one's 
birth and childhood. Although there were no moun- 
tains, there were hills, — the oldest-born of moun- 
tains ; high, round, and innumerable. Great trees 



LITCHFIELD REVISITED. 15 

there were ; full of confidences with the wind that 
chastised them in winter, and kissed and caressed 
them all the summer. The^roar of winter winds to 
our young ears was terrible as the thunder of waves 
or the noise of battle. All night long the cold, shel- 
terless trees moaned. Their strong crying penetrated 
our sleep, and shaped our dreams. At every waking, 
the air was full of mighty winds. The house creaked 
and strained, and, at some more furious gust, shud- 
dered and trembled all over. Then the windows rat- 
tled, the cracks and crevices whistled each its own 
distinctive note, and the chimneys, like diapasons in 
an organ, had their deep and hollow rumble. Each 
room had its own note, and, if carried blindfold, we 
could have told the rooms over all the house by the 
peculiar wind-sound which each had. 

Next to the winds, our night-experiences in early 
boyhood were much affected by rats. The old house 
seems to have been a favorite of this curious vermin. 
There is something in the short, hot glitter of a rat's 
eye that has never ceased to affect us unpleasantly. 
We could not help imagining them to be the mere 
receptacles of mischievous spirits, and their keen eyes 
had always a kind of mocking expression, as if they 
said, " You think we are rats, but if we get hold of 
you, you will know that we are a good deal more than 
that." We never could estimate how many populated 
our old house. The walls seemed like city thorough- 
fares, and the ceiling like a Forum or a Roman thea- 
tre. We used to lie in bed and marvel at what was 
going on. Sometimes there would be a great still- 
ness, as if they had all gone to meeting. Then again 
they would troop about with such a swell of liberty 



16 EYES AND EAES. 

and gladness, that it was quite plain that the meeting 
was out. But nothing ever scared and amused us so 
much as their way of going up and down the parti- 
tions. At first, up would come one, then another, 
and finally quite a bevy, squeaking and frolicking, aa 
if they were schoolboys going up stairs, nipping each 
other and cutting up all manner of pranks. Then 
came a stillness. Next, a premonitory rat would rush 
down, evidently full of news, and immediately down 
would pour after him a stream of rats, rushing like 
mad, and apparently tumbling heels over head. By 
and by, some old sawyer would commence where he 
left off the night before, cutting the same partition. 
To this must be added nibblings, rat-nestled paper, an 
occasional race of rats across the bed, the manipula- 
tion of corn in the garret, the forays with cats and 
kittens, the rat-engines, — ''steel-traps," "box-traps," 
"figure-fours," and all manner of devices, — in spite 
of which the rats held their own, and, if allowed suf- 
frage, would have out-voted the whole family, dog and 
cats to boot, four to one. 

The morning after our arrival in Litchfield we sal- 
lied forth alone. The day was high and wide, full of 
stillness, and serenely radiant. As we carried our 
present life up the North Street, we met at every step 
our boyhood life coming down. There were the old 
trees, but looking not so large as to our young eyes. 
The stately road had, however, been bereaved of the 
button-ball trees, which had been crippled by disease. 
But the old elms retained a habit peculiar to Litcli- 
field. There seems to be a current of wind which at 
times passes high up in the air over the town, and 
which moves the tops of the trees, while on the ground 



LITCHFIELD REVISITED. 17 

there is no movement of wind. How vividly did that 
sound from above bring back early days, when for 
hours we lay upon the windless grass, and watched 
the top leaves flutter, and marked how still were the 
under leaves of the same trees ! 

One by one came the old houses. On the corner 
stood and stands the jail, — awful building to young 
sinners ! We never passed its grated windows with- 
out a salutary chill. The old store, and the same old 
name, Buell, on it ; the bank, and its long, lean legs 
spindling up to hold the shelf up under the roof! 
The Colonel Tallmadge house, that used to seem so 
grand that it was cold, but whose cherry-trees in the 
front-yard seemed warm enough and attractive to our 
longing lips and watery mouth. How well do we 
remember the stately gait of the venerable Colonel of 
Revolutionary memory ! We do not recollect that 
he ever spoke to us or greeted us. Not because he 
was austere or unkind, but from a kind of military 
reserve. We thought him good and polite, but should 
as soon have thought of climbing the church steeple 
as of speaking to one living so high and venerable 
above all boys ! 

Then came Judge Gould's ! Did we not remember 
that, and the faces that used to illumine it ? The 
polished and polite judge, the sons and daughters, the 
little office in the yard, the successive classes of law 
students that received here that teaching which has 
since so often honored both bar and bench. Here, 
too, and we stopped to retrace the very place, being 
set on by a fiery young Southern blood, without any 
cause that we knew of then or can remember now, 
we undertook to whip one of Judge Gould's sons, and 



18 EYES AND EARS. 

did not do it. We never were satisfied with the re- 
sult, and think if the thing could be reviewed now it 
might turn out differently. 

There, too, stood Dr. Catlin's house, looking as if 
the rubs of time had polished it, instead of injuring. 
Next there seemed to our puzzled memory a vacancy. 
Ought there not to be about there a Holmes house, — 
to which we used to go and get baskets of Yirgaloo 
pears, and were inwardly filled, as a satisfying method 
of keeping us honest toward the pears in the basket ? 

But Dr. Sheldon's house is all right. Dear old Dr. 
Sheldon ! We began to get well as soon as he came 
into the house. Or if the evil spirit delayed, a little 
" cream o' tartar, with hot water poured upon it, and 
sweetened," finished the work. He had learned, long 
before the days of homoeopathy, that a doctor's chief 
business is to keep parents from giving their children 
medicine, so that Nature may have a fair chance at 
the disease, without having its attention divided or 
diverted. 

But now we stop before Miss Pierce's, — a name 
known in thousands of families, when gray-haired 
mothers remember the soft and gentle days of Litch- 
field schooling ! The fine residence is well preserved, 
and time hath been gentle within likewise. But the 
school-house is gone, and she that for so many years 
kept it busy is gone, and the throng that have crossed 
its threshold brood the whole globe with offices of 
maternal love. The Litchfield Law School, in the 
days of Judge Tapping Reeve and Judge Gould, and 
Miss Pierce's Female School, were, in their day, two 
very memorable institutions ; and, though since sup- 
planted by others upon a larger scale, there are few 



LITCHFIELD EEVISITED. 19 

that will have performed so much, if we take into 
account the earlmess of the times, and the fact that 
they were pioneers and parents of those that have 
supplanted them. But they are gone, the buildings 
moved off, and the ground smoothed, and soft to the 
foot with green grass. No more shall the setting sun 
see Litchfield streets thronged with young gentlemen 
and ladies, and filling the golden air with laughter, 
or low converse which, un-laughing then, made life 
musical forever after ! 

But where is the Brace house ? An old red house, — 
red once, but picked at by winds, and washed by rains, 
till the color was neutral. Thanks to the elements, 
the old elm-trees guard the spot, a brotherhood as 
noble as these eyes have ever seen, lifted high up, and 
in the part nearest heaven locking their arms together, 
and casting back upon their separate trunks and bole 
an undivided shade. So are many, separate in root 
and trunk, united far up by their heaven-touching 
thoughts and affections. 

Mrs. Lord's house is the only one now before we 
reach our own native spot. This, too, holds its own, 
and is fertile in memories. Across the way lived 
Sheriflf Landon, famous for dry wit and strong poli- 
tics. A thread there spun has stretched far down 
into later time, and been woven in the light and dark 
of after-fio-ures in the fabric of life. But south of 
him lived the greatest man in town, Mr. Parkes, that 
owned the stages ! and the wittiest man in town with 
us boys was Hiram Barnes, that drove stage for him ! 
To be sure, neither of them were eminent for learn- 
ing or civil influence. But in that temple which boys' 
imaginations make, a stage-proprietor and a stage- 



20 EYES AND EARS. 

driver stand forth as grand as Minerva in the Par- 
thenon ! 

But there are houses on the other side. The eastern 
side of Litchfield North Street, like the eastern side of 
Broadway, was never so acceptable to fashion, albeit 
some memorable names lived there. It was our good 
fortune to be born on the west side of the street. We 
know not what blessings must have descended upon 
as from having been born on the fashionable side of 
the street. One shudders to think how near he escaped 
oeing born on the other side, — the east side of the 
street. 

But there is our own old home ! Of this we must 
act speak at the end of a long article. 




PHRENOLOGY. 
How TO MAKE Preaching Hit. 

HE Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is quoted as 
having said in a sermon that he believed 
Phrenology, and owed to the " practical 
knowledge of the human soul " thence 
acquired whatever success he had had " in bringing 
the truths of the Gospel to bear practically upon the 
minds of men." The Catholic Herald thinks there is 
something in this, but suggests to Mr. Beecher that 
there is a lack of desirable certainty in this process 
of gathering the character of one's congregation by 
surveying the cranial developments, and that they 
have something far better. 



PHRENOLOGY. ■ 21 

" Now, just where Phrenology fails, the confessional 
succeeds. No bumps are studied, and no character- 
istic is guessed at. The penitent says plainly and 
distinctly, ' Thus and thus I thought, and thus and 
thus I did.' ' So I acted, and so I failed to act.' 

" If he says, ^ I took that wrongfully which was 
another's,' it is not necessary that the confessor 
should know that there is a bump of accretiveness. 
If he say, ' I have been violent, and struck my asso- 
ciate,' what is the need of knowing that he has a 
development of the organ of * combativeness.' If 
he is sinful in thought, and not in act, the tendency 
is better manifested by confession than by physical 
development ; and in all cases the teacher in the 
confessional is close to him, and ready to give the 
advice, adminster the commonition or discipline, or 
offer consolation and encouragement, that the whole 
circumstances of the case demand. 

" Mr. Beecher asks the head of his hearers, that 
he may deal with the concerns of their souls, while a 
Catholic priest says, ' My son, give me thy heart.' " 

The Examiner^ a Baptist paper of New York, 
adds : " It may be allowed a third party to suggest, 
that both methods have some defect. The phreno- 
logical inference is not infallible ; the * penitent ' may 
not tell the full and exact truth. What4hen ? " 

In regard to this matter of Phrenology, a few words 
may not be amiss. 

1. When we employ the term Phrenology, it con- 
veys to our mind no such idea as a science of bumpSy 
as it is vulgarly called : nor is it Craniology, or a 
science of the skull. It is the science of the mind. 
It incltides within its circle the nature, conditions, 



22 EYES AND EARS. 

and habits of the human mind, as far as they are 
known. 

The only thing which many people suppose Phre- 
nology to teach is, that mental traits can be discovered 
by the conformation of the head. But this is its least 
value. It is not unimportant. It has a degree of use 
in practical life. But, in the natare of the case, it 
alone will be serviceable principally in exaggerated 
and imperfect heads, and doubtful and difficult in pro- 
portion as one's mind is generally and evenly de- 
veloped. Phrenology assumes the brain to be the 
organ of the mind. It teaches that the brain is not a 
simple unity, but a congeries of organs ; that special 
faculties employ several special portions of the brain 
for their manifestation ; that the skull, in general, 
conforms to the brain, and indicates the size of its 
different parts. But, then, what is the quality of the 
substance of the brain ? is it fine and healthy ? or is 
it coarse and flabby ? This must be known, also ; 
and it is to be judged by the general appearance of 
the man, his temperament, skin, muscle, etc. In like 
manner, the quantity and quality of blood which 
flows upon the brain and stimulates it, determine the 
power of action to a certain degree, and this must be 
judged by the size of the organs of digestion, of aera- 
tion, and of propulsion, or, in other words, by the 
form and perfection of the organs of the trunk. The 
head alone does not indicate character. But the 
head, the texture of the skin and muscle, the build of 
the body, and, lastly, the expression of the face, pos- 
ture, gesture. It takes the whole man to be the 
proper index of man. And Phrenology, as the sci- 
ence of the mind, includes in its circuit whatever the 



PHRENOLOGY. 23 

mind uses, and whatever in the human body aids, 
modifies, or influences the mind. Of course, Physi- 
ognomy, Pliysiology, etc., are, to a degree, included 
- in its limits. 

We are far from regarding Phrenology as a com- 
pleted science. Indeed, we believe that more yet 
remains to be done than has been done. But ado- 
lescent and undeveloped as it yet is, we regard it as 
incomparably beyond anything which has been re- 
garded as a science of mind. 

2. Although a knowledge of Organology, and a 
certain facility of judging men's nature from the 
structure, is desirable, yet, if one did not know a sin- 
gle external phase of Phrenology, if he accepted its 
.classification and division of faculties, and its laws of 
combination and activity, he would derive from these 
more advantage in the use of himself, and in his 
judgment of others, than could be had from all other 
systems. And this, chiefly, because the faculties are 
precise and specific, discriminated one from another, 
and consonant with the experiences and observatiojis 
of men in daily life. 

We do not say, that to a Phrenologist the human 
soul becomes clear as crystal ; that he can walk about 
and read men like large printed placards. No such 
thing! There is great skill required, much experi- 
ence, careful observation, and even then there will 
be many mistakes made, and much found that will 
baffle the most penetrating. All that can be said 
properly is, that practical Phrenology adds very 
largely to our stock of knowledge, that it simplifies 
many things which in other systems are obscure, that 
it very materially helps us even when it does not give 



24 EYES AND EARS. * 

US the whole, and especially, that it gives us the right 
direction of research, and the right method^ so that 
whatever we do read is more likely to be sober truth, 
than the results of the spider-systems of philosophy, 
in which each philosopher spun his theory in some 
corner, from the web-bag of his own personal con- 
sciousness, and left his starved disciples to hang upon 
it like flies upon cobwebs. 

3. The usefulness of Phrenology to a minister of 
the Gospel is to be settled by asking the question, 
Is it beneficial to a teacher and healer of the mind to 
know what the human mind is, and what are the laws 
of its action? 

It is a mere impertinence to say that the knowledge 
of the human mind, or of Phrenology or the science 
of mind, will not secure a man from mistakes. Noth- 
ing will secure a man from mistakes but Death. 
That settles everything very accurately. 

Are not the sciences of Anatomy and Physiology to 
be studied ? and yet the most skilful physician blun- 
ders every day of his life. Is there no use in mechan- 
ics, because the artisan commits mistakes ? Ought 
not an artist to dissect and study the human structure, 
because the best-instructed students err in drawing ? 

No man will ever know the human soul so well as 
to be able to judge rightly, trace skilfully and aim 
accurately, every time. Man is too vast an organiza- 
tion to be judgdd as we would a fly. Men, acting 
in masses, played upon by a thousand diverse influ- 
ences, changing their fancies every hour, yet under 
all changes true to some certain ruling impulses ; 
strangely blended with good and evil, — good and 
evil that come and go as the shadows of wind-shaken 



PHRENOLOGY. 25 

leaves do upon the tremulous waters, — are not to be 
known with the same precision as we know manimate 
things, or the simple and constant laws of nature. 

But there is a great difference between knowing noth- 
ing and knowing something. There is a great benefit, 
in practical affairs, in a degree of knowledge which is 
altogether too vague for scientific uses ; and no minis- 
ter of the Gospel can afford to be without a practical 
knowledge of men, and in gaining that, nothing will 
aid him more than a use of the materials afforded by 
Phrenology. And if, when he has done all that he can, 
he finds that he is far from a perfect understanding 
of man in all the mazes of his daily activities, he will 
still know vastly more than if he had not at all ex- 
plored the springs of action and the laws of activity. 

Our Roman Catholic friend must be simple indeed, 
if he thinks that the Confessional is the grand means 
of knowledge. A few overt actions may be found out 
there. But what does it reveal of the inward states, 
the multitude of fancies, the swarm of thoughts that 
spring and spread themselves in an instant the world 
over, like the rosy flushes of sunset rays, spread through 
half a hemisphere in a moment, and in a moment 
retracted and vanished, — of all those dark passions 
that lurk, but never appear, — of those moods of mind 
that have no language, that never form themselves 
into ideas, and that yet do fever the whole being and 
change the complexion of thought and purpose ? 

One might as well suppose that he could learn the 
whole mystery of generation and life, because he heard 
tlie hen cackle when she laid her egg, as to suppose 
that the priest knows the human soul, because the 
thief told his theft and the murderer his crime. ^ 

2 "^ 




26 ■ EYES AND EAES. 



LETTERS FROM THE COUNTRY. 

Mountain Rest, Matteawan, August, 1857. 

IN returning from an excursion the other 
day, one of the children called our summer 
home the Mountain Rest. That, then, shall 
"^ be its name, most fitly given. It lies snugly, 
close up under the North Beacon. The North and 
South Beacons form the two sides of an immense 
mountain bowl, and the highest point is marked upon 
local maps as 1,650 feet high. If we were any nearer 
to the mountain, we should be on it. We touch the 
hem of its garment. We are adopted into its favor. 
Every day it breathes a blessing upon u.s. All the 
loose winds that fly about without anybody to take 
care of them in the high pastures of the upper realm, 
it collects in its shepherd bosom, and, feeding them 
with moistness and the balsamic odors of pine-leaves 
and other evergreens, it sends them down upon us in 
refreshing draughts and puffs. Yonder, in parcels, 
lies the Hudson ; beyond it the sparkling city of New- 
burg, most beautiful in the distance. At night its 
windows, star-like, speak through the dark air of hun- 
dreds of families gathered for the evening. And Pow- 
ell's factory, close upon the water's edge, with its 
lines of brilliant lights, is like a fiery-eyed battalion 
watching the ford, or ferry rather. Farther back 
swells up a young mountain, behind Newburg, just 
large enough to hang clouds on for splendid sunsets ; 
and farthest of all, the long blue horizon line made 
by the Shawangunk mountains, the bound of our 
sight, to whose level summits the sun attracts our 



LETTERS FROM THE COUNTRY. 27 

evening eyes, and rewards them by ten thousand val- 
iant feats of clouds and colors. South of us are the 
Storm King mountahis, and the pass of the Hudson 
through the Highlands. 

There is nothing so simple and apparently unchang- 
ing as are mountains. And yet there is no variety in 
tree, in plain, in river or lake, that can be compared 
to mountain variations. Upon nothing else does the 
atmosphere work such wonderful effects. We do not 
refer to those vast heights whose snow and ice-clad 
summits play with such witching effects with light 
and color ; but to our lower and home-bred moun- 
tains. This one behind us, not two thousand feet 
high, is a solemn necromancer, forever putting forth 
new fancies. 

It wears one face in the morning ; it changes its 
countenance at noon ; it surprises you with still an- 
other at night. It has one face for heat, and one for 
the cold. It shags and beards itself with mists, look- 
ing down upon you venerable as a hoary seer. Then 
it drives away every vestige of cloud, and reveals to 
the eye each line, every depression, every crease and 
crevice, with such plainness that it changes the whole 
mountain expression, and you doubt whether you 
have ever before seen it. A new picture stands be- 
fore you every day, and yet its identity is preserved, 
so that it maintains its old associations with new sites 
of beauty. Not a cloud can come near without pay- 
ing some tribute. Sometimes you shall see a vast 
range of white, glistering clouds piled up in banks 
and brilliant boulders, one upon another silently ris- 
ing up behind the green mountain, that thus appears 
but a foreground figured upon this magnificent range 
of air-mountains. 



28 EYES AND EARS. 

At other times, fleets of clouds are seen piloting 
their way quietly through the air, and letting down 
their shadows upon the mountain-side, as if to anchor 
there. But both cloud-ship and cloud-anchor move 
on, dark below and white above ! It would seem as 
if the smile of the cloud was the frown of the moun- 
tain. 

But all these are mere fancies compared with the 
grandeur of mountains when storms make them their 
walking-ground. After long heat and dryness, the 
mountains seem to shrink back, lose distinctness, and 
become almost insignificant. The summer, which 
shrivels vegetation with long droughts, seems to parch 
and shrink the very rocks. But, suddenly, from the 
South there come up the tokens of a thunder-storm. 
Storms especially love mountain highways, and walk 
upon their summits with a majesty unknown in low- 
lands. Upon such a theatre the spectacle, lifted up 
above you, exhibits itself with a grandeur that recalls 
the noble old conception, that God rides upon storms, 
and tabernacles himself in clouds upon mountain-tops. 
Indeed, we never see that half-scared motion of cloud- 
folds rolling out from tlie interior, as if there were an 
inner presence which drove forth the terrified mists, 
and justified their fear by headlong thunderbolts and 
fierce lightning-flashes, without an irresistible impres- 
sion of a real living agency at work within the storm ; 
and that clouds are but the hiding of the Divine Pres- 
ence ! 

Nor is the imagination lessened when the murky 
splendor passes on, and the mountain lifts up its 
cleansed head and sides with such vivid green, and in 
such clearness and exquisite beauty, that you feel as 



) LETTERS FROM THE COUNTRY. ^ 

if they had been in communion with superior influ- 
ence, and had received a baptism from on high. This 
never seemed more striking than yesterday. While 
in church, in the morning, there came on a sudden 
dash of rain and hail. We rode home with the moun- 
tains before us wearing robes of clouds, and grand 
with flying storm. To look at these tops, and to re- 
call all the passages of the Old Testament which speak 
divinely of mountains, would be a sermon more im- 
pressive than any from the living voice. 

By the way, yesterday morning I was at the Metho- 
dist church here. A very pleasant room it is, and I 
am told that a very worthy society occupy it. But I 
have a most weighty charge to bring against the good 
people, of musical apostasy. I had expected a treat 
of good hearty singing. There were Charles Wesley's 
hymns, and there were the good old Methodist tunes 
that ancient piety loved and modern conceit laughs 
at ! Imagine my chagrin when, after reading the 
hymn, up rose a choir from the shelf at the other end 
of the church, and began to sing a monotonous tune 
of the modern music-book style. The patient congre- 
gation stood up meekly to be sung to, as men stand 
under rain when there is no shelter. Scarcely a lip 
moved. No one seemed to hear the hymn, or to care 
for the music. How I longed for the good old Meth- 
odist thunder ! One good burst of old-fashioned mu- 
sic would have blown this modern singing out of the 
windows like wadding from a gun ! Men may call 
this an improvement, and genteel ! Gentility has 
nearly killed our churches, and it will kill Methodist 
churches if they give way to its false and pernicious 
ambition. We know very well what good old-fash- 



30 EYES AND EARS. 

ioned Methodist music was. It had faults enough, 
doubtless, against taste. But it had an inivard pur- 
pose and a religious earnestness which enabled it to 
carry all its faults, and to triumph in spite of them ! 
It was worship. Yesterday's music was tolerable 
singing, but very poor worship. We are sorry that 
just as our churches are beginning to imitate the for- 
mer example of Methodist churches, and to introduce 
melodies that the people love, and to encourage uni- 
versal singing in the congregation, our Methodist 
brethren should pick up our cast-oif formalism in 
church music. It will be worse with them than with 
us. It will mark a greater length of decline. We 
could hardly believe our eyes and ears yesterday. 
We could not persuade ourselves that we stood before 
a Methodist church. We should have supposed it to 
be a good solid Presbyterian or Congregational church, 
in which the choir and pulpit performed everything, 
and the people did nothing. 

Our brethren in this church must not take these 
remarks unkindly. They are presented in all kind- 
ness and affection. Tiie choir sung better than many 
choirs in city churches, but no one sung with them. 
The people were mute. They used their ears, and 
not their mouths ! But alas ! we missed the old 
fervor, — the good old-fashioned Methodist fire. We 
have seen the time when one of Charles Wesley's 
hymns, taking the congregation by the hand, would 
have led them up to the gate of heaven. But yester- 
day it only led them up as far as the choir, about ten 
feet above the pews. This will never do. Methodists 
will make magnificent worshipping Christians if they 
are not ashamed of their own ways, but very poor 



LETTEES FROM THE COUNTRY. 81^ 

ones if tliey are. Brethren ! you are in the wrong 
way. It will never do for you to silence the people. 
Your fire will go out if you rake it up under the 
ashes of a false refinement. Let an outsider, but a 
well-wisher, say these plain words to you without 
offence. The Methodist Church has laid the Chris- 
tian world under a great debt by its service in the 
cause of Christ, and we have a right in it, and an 
interest in it, as common Christians, too great to 
suffer us to see signs of degeneracy in it without 
sorrow and alarm. We hope God means to do great 
things by it yet, for our land. But it will not be by 
giving up heart and soul, zeal and popular enthusiasm 
in worship, for the sake of sham propriety and tasteful 
formalism, that the Methodist Church will become yet 
further efficient. We hope to see such a revival of 
religion among them as shall come like a freshet upon 
their churches, and sweep out the channels of song, 
and carry away the dead wood and trash which has 
already dammed up the current of song, and made 
the congregation stagnant. O that there may be a 
rain of righteousness upon them, which shall swell 
their hearts to overflowing, and cleanse their sanctu- 
ary from all formalism, and especially from the for- 
mahsm of pedantic music ! 



H2 EYES AND EARS. 




HOURS OF EXALTATION. 

Matteawan, N. Y., August 17, 1857. 

]LTHOUGH we have usually a general and 
common use of all the senses, yet, in per- 
sons of certain temperaments, some single 
sense has its moods of predominance, and 
all the others subside and accompany it, as a low and 
pleasant harmony in music. We have compared it to 
the habit of a band, in which the French horn seems 
to rise at times above all others, and to float upon the 
harmony like a yacht upon the sea ; then subsiding, 
the clarinets emerge and shout above all other instru- 
ments, but only for a moment, and then mingling 
again with their companions, they send forth the 
bugle, or other instrument. Some such change as 
this is going on in every one who carries all his senses 
into Nature for the enjoyment of her melodies and 
harmonies. 

Some days seem to be characterized by some single 
sense. There are head-days, heart-days, there are 
eye-days and ear-days, and promiscuous days in which 
delicious sensations of pleasure at life in general pre- 
dominate. These last are transcendent. It would 
seem as if each faculty, every sense, and all the 
nerves, had come to an agreement, and were sensi- 
tively submissive to all the effects of nature and soci- 
ety. In such transfigurations it scarcel}^ matters 
what happens. Nothing can be amiss. All sounds, 
all colors, all movements, all conditions of cloud, air, 
temperature ; all things, — grass, rock, or wood, are 



HOUES OF EXALTATION. 83 

not only satisfying, but blissful. We seem to hang 
like a harp in the air, and all things reach forth to 
touch the strings for joy. And the sense of perfect 
rejoicing is so unconnected with any apparent cause, 
or else so far beyond their ordinary effects, that the 
mind is in a gentle wondering, all the time, as to 
what can be the cause of such satisfaction. Thus it 
is that consciousness is reversed ; and whereas com- 
monly we feel that happiness is an effect within us, 
that its seat is in our own mind, upon these rare days 
of ubiquitous and general gladness it seems as if the 
happiness lay without us, and we were voyagers sail- 
ing through it, and it lapped and murmured upon us 
from without, as waves and ripples do upon the sum- 
mer sides of tranquil ships. Tiie air seems made up 
of happiness, the clouds, the trees, the grass, the 
pathless birds, land and water, — all seem to pulsate 
happiness, to emit it, to breathe it forth upon us ; and 
it falls upon us as dew upon flowers, as serenades ris- 
ing into the moonlit air seem to rain down on every 
roof and every casement through the whole town. It 
is a rare and gracious treat when, in these moods, 
Nature, like some magnificent Handel, seems to rest 
from her graver labors and exercises, and to run her 
fingers, in wild caprices of fancy and joy, over the 
keys of her organ ; exercising herself upon every stop, 
and filling the whole air and world with delights 
innumerable ! We are filled with the very affluence 
of peacefulness and joy. There is neither sorrow, nor 
want, nor madness, nor trouble in the wide world 1 
The glory of the Lord, that at other times hangs upon 
the horizon, like embattled clouds, — full, gorgeous 
with the sun, — on such days as we have described 
2* c 



84 EYES AND EAKS. 

descends and fills the whole earth. The impassioned 
language of the Psalmist and prophets, which, on 
other days, is lifted up so high above our imagination 
that we can scarcely hear it, now comes down and 
sounds all its grandeur in our ears. The mountains 
praise the Lord. The trees clap their hands. The 
clouds are his chariot, and bear him through the air, 
leaving brightness and joy along the path. The birds 
know their King. The flowers lift up their heads, 
and with the silent tongue of perfume praise God 
with choice of odors ! The whol^ earth doth praise 
thee ! 

In these transcendent moods each sense radiates 
a glory upon whatever it perceives. Sounds are 
magical. That which we usually notice with no 
favor becomes sweet. Even discordant sounds are 
smoothed and softened. The eye detects new lines, 
new symmetries, more beautiful forms, and more ex- 
quisite colors, than it is wont to do. The memories 
that come up from the past bring joys even greater 
for the moment than the reality. Friends and friend- 
ships are glorified. And over against the past stands 
the future, full of dim joys that hourly increase. 
These joys of the past and of the future may be 
likened to that hour,, at certain conjunctions of the 
sun and moon, when one has just left the horizon, 
but suffuses it yet with his trail of light, while the 
other, dim in the east, is advancing every moment 
with growing brightness to rule the hour! 

But such days have no art to perpetuate them- 
selves. To-morrow will sweep you to the opposite 
pole. Yet they are of great use. They exalt an ideal 
of life. Subjects held up in their light will never be 



HOURS OF EXALTATION. 35 

as low and ignoble as they may have been before. 
And the light in which Duty, Love, and Labor shine 
in these lucid days will give us exaltation for many 
days after. 

The roots of Nature are in the human mind. The 
life and meaning of the outward world is not in itself, 
but in us. And when we have taken in all that the 
eye can gather, the ear, the hand, and the other 
senses, we have but the body ; we do not yet read and 
know the spirit and truth, which cannot be received 
by the senses, but by the soul. And Nature com- 
prises in herself all the effects which she causes upon 
the senses, and all that she causes upon the mind. He 
will see the most without who has the most within ; 
and he who only sees with his bodily organs sees but 
the surface. He who paints or describes with the 
senses alone is but a surface artist. This superficial 
reading of Nature is as if one had been taught, like 
Milton's daughters, to read the Greek language flu- 
ently without understanding any part of its mean- 
ing. The sound is sweet, the reading is fluent. But 
all the life and contents are wanting. And he that 
reads Nature reads God's language. He only pro- 
nounces the words, without the meanings, who sees 
the natural world by his senses only, and not also by 
his feelings. The bell from yonder steeple sounds out 
suddenly through the storm-washed air. What does 
that sound mean ? To the bell, rattling. To the 
mechanical philosopher it means the vibration pro- 
duced upon the air. To the watchmaker it means 
twelve o'clock, — noon. To the laborer it means rest 
and food. To the schoolboy it means release from a 
living tomb. To the nurse it is the hour for appointed 



36 EYES AND EARS. 

medicine. To the impatient bridegroom it is the hour 
of wedding. It is the funeral hour also, and the 
sexton cracks his whip. It means separation and 
heart-pangs to those aboard the cars. That bell- 
stroke means all that it can make a man feel and 
think. It bears back the thought on its waves, and 
strands us upon the shores of childhood. It opens 
the door of tears or of smiles, of joyful remembrances 
or of sad ones. It reaches toward the feelings. Those 
pulsations beat upon the gate of Eternity. Lying 
upon the warm and fragrant grass, flecked all over 
with the golden-spotted shadow of an elm, that deep, 
solitary, single stroke of the bell, lifted high above 
the ground, that does not sound out one note and 
cease, as a trumpet does, but moves and warbles ; that 
pulses again and again, going and coming, as if it 
were beckoning and soliciting us to follow; — upon 
that sound we do ride bravely heavenward, and in its 
dying cadences hear a hundred voices, speaking things 
to the feeling unutterable in human language. And 
that single sound is all that it can do. It is a cause 
that includes in itself all the effects it is capable of 
producing. 

Nature, likewise, implants her spirit in the human 
soul. Her shape is without us. Her meaning is 
within us. 

This great mountain behind me is not simply granite 
lifted up against the eastern sky, as a bulwark against 
the morning sun, which it hinders from my windows 
a full morning hour. It is a silent prophet of God, 
that reveals both ways, past and future, backward 
and forward ; and all that I think when I gaze upon 
it, and all that I feel, and all that airy middle-expe- 



HOURS OF EXALTATION. 37 

rience of deliquescing thought resolving itself into 
emotion, tenuous and misty ; and all that it suggests 
by association, — all belong to it. 

What a man sees in Nature will therefore depend 
upon what he has to see with. Deprived of four 
senses, a man would perceive only sounds ; deprived 
of but three senses, he would perceive only sounds 
and sights. If he have all his physical senses, and 
nothing more, he will see the rind and husk of Nature. 
If he bring reason along, he will perceive the con- 
nections and homogeneities of natural objects, their 
relations to each other and to us. If he add imagi- 
nation, he will find yet deeper insight ; if feeling, 
deeper yet ; if religious feeling, more profoundly ; 
and if he hold all these up against the background 
of the Infinite, then indeed, to his unspeakable satis- 
faction, the heavens declare the ^lory of God, and the 
firmament showeth his handiwork. Then day unto 
day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth 
knowledge. 

In this view is revealed the difference between one 
man and another in the enjoyment of Nature. One 
man communes with natural objects by many more 
faculties than another. One artist represents Nature 
seen with the eyes simply ; another, as seen with 
the soul. And though we cannot by form and color 
represent all or the chief part of that which the 
mind perceives, yet what we do picture will be very 
different if seen only superficially or likewise with 
feeling. 

The augmentations of pleasure in this way are 
wonderful. The least tilings and the most obscure 
become ministers of rare delight. The hands of a 



38 



EYES AND EAKS. 



giant upon the keys of an organ make no more music 
than the hands of a common man, for the sound is in 
the instrument, not in the hand that touches it. And 
the fingers of Nature, touching the faculties of the 
human soul, produce effects, not by the magnitude of 
the thing acting, but by the music within the instru- 
ment touched. 

Nevertheless, there is a great difference between 
one thing and another in Nature. All things are 
not just alike, and the seeming difference of outward 
things is not altogether in us. It is not to obliterate 
or confuse a well-known truth that we write, but to 
make plainer a truth not so well known, — that is, it 
requires foresight, an object to project its image, and 
an eye to receive it ; — so, on a larger sphere, an out- 
ward world is required to produce an effect, and an 
inward nature to receive it ; and both of these work- 
ing together are required before either of them is 
clearly developed. 



FIRST SUMMER LETTER. 



Matteawan, July 19, 1857. 

HE summer has broken forth. The earth is 
filled with heat, and the whole heaven is 
hot ! The morning greedily drinks up the 
dew. The plump stems by noon lose their 
tenseness, and wilt down. The afternoon rides over 
the subdued flowers. We all seek the shade, and 
hold our open necks to the winds, meanwhile greatly 




FmST SUMMER LETTER. 39 

admiring the insects on every side, that grow more 
nimble with every degree of heat. With the ther- 
mometer at 60°, flies are quite sedate and thoughtful ; 
at 75° they grow gay and musical ; but at 85° or 90° 
they become wild with excitement, and whirl and 
dance through the quivermg air as if heat were wine 
to them. 

But we have taken to ourselves the friendship of 
mountains, and made league with them against the 
summer fervor. They lift up their great orb as a 
shield against the morning sun, and when, turning 
their flank, the sun comes down from the south, they 
breathe forth a cool wind from their hidden places, 
and we defy the heat ! 

Every summer has its own portrait and peculiar 
individualism. This summer has brought around us 
multitudes of birds beyond any former one. We are 
living in a pleasant old house, around which fruit- 
trees have grown in which birds have bred and lived 
unmolested from year to year. It is but a dozen 
wing-beats from the house to the mountain woods. 
Nothing can please a meditative bird better than to 
have domestic scenes on one side and the seclusion 
of the wilderness on the other. A bird^ loves a kind 
of shy familiarity. Here we have a garden, a door- 
yard, an orchard, a barn, grouped together, — and 
then, on the other hand, the young forests of scooped 
mountain-side. So the birds come down here for fun, 
and go up there for reflection. This is their world ; 
that is their cathedral. I notice that they are fond of 
congregational singing not only, but every one sings 
his own tune, in his own time, and to his own words. 
Nevertheless their singing sounds well. They begin 



40 EYES AND EARS. 

when the stars fade in the morning, and not an hour 
till star-time again do they leave untremnlous with 
music. The sweetest of them all is the song-sparrow 
or song-finch ; and it is most numerous and most con- 
stant in its music. Two or three pairs seem to have 
nests in the yard, and apparently many neighbors 
come to visit and have a chat with them over a social 
worm. 

Tlie bobolink has ceased his song. This fantastic 
fellow only sings during his love season. Then he 
takes to the duties of life with great sobriety. He 
goes through his season, and flies off to the Soutli 
to become a rice-bird. The song of these birds sounds 
to me as if they were trying to laugh and sing at 
the same time. Their song is in snatches, like an 
old harper's preliminary touches before he sounds 
forth the real tune ; only they are always preluding, 
and never come to the real subject-matter ! Then 
we have goldfinches, or " yellow-birds," the egotis- 
tic " phebes," that sit and call their own name for 
amusement ; tlie pert and springy wren, barn-swal- 
lows and martins, robins, larks, and, at night, ivhippo- 
wills. Blessed be the whippowill ! tliat opens up so 
many volumes in tlie mind, and sets one thinking 
backward, — if, as I did, one ever heard them in their 
youth, waking in the moonlit chamber to hear them 
sound their notes, bold and plaintive, upon tlie rock 
that stood in the edge of tlie wheat-field ! From that 
day to this the whippowill has had the luck to gather 
about him fond associations. How little he knows, as 
he sings, unconscious messenger, what he is saying 
to me ! 

Unnamed birds there are, 1 know not how many. 



SECOND SmiMER LETTER. 41 

But I have my books. I shall find you out, every one 
of you, whose names are there written ; and if there 
be anything worth imparting, our readers shall have 
the benefit thereof. 

* 




SECOND SUMMER LETTER. 

Matteawan, July 27, 1857. 

'OBODY has any business to expect satisfac- 
tion in a pure country life, for two months, 
unless he has a decided genius for leisure. 
If a man expects to live in the country, to 
gain and spend his means there, of course he must 
have something to do, and do it all the while. So, too, 
those who have a tramp on hand, — who make a 
pedestrian tour or a fishing excursion, — must needs 
stir about. Likewise must they have something to do 
who go into the country to see city people in the 
country. Such I take to be all loungers and visitors 
at fashionable country resorts. This lunacy, however, 
is modest. It pretends to nothing but what it is. But 
to gather up yourself and kindred, and sit down in 
a plain country house, without bears or lions about 
it, without anything to do but to rest, with no mar- 
vels or phenomena, but only the good, real, common 
country ; — if you mean to be happy in this, I repeat, 
you should have the element of leisure fully developed 
in you. You cannot be happy if you are in a hurry. 
You must not be in a hurry to get up or to sit down. 
You must not be in a hurry to get up in the morning 



42 EYES AND EARS. 

or to retire at night. You must regard it as quite the 
same, whether you look at a tree ten minutes or 
thirty. If you walk out, never must you look at your 
watch ; go till you return. If you sit down upon a 
breezy fence or wall, it should be a matter of indiffer- 
ence to you whether it be four o'clock, or five, or six. 
There can be no greater impertinence than to say, " It 
is time to go ! " There is no such thing as time to a 
man in a summer vacation. 

When you come into a new scene, you must not 
expect to be at home in a moment. Nature may say 
to you, very kindly, " Make yourself at home " ; but 
Nature says it just as any other sensible personage 
does, not with the expectation that you will do it, but 
only to show a spirit of hospitality. For it is quite 
impossible that you should be acquainted with scenery 
in a moment. Nature is both frank and shy. Like 
well-bred people, she receives you graciously in all 
common intercourse, but confidentially only after she 
has found you out, and knows you to be worthy. 
Sudden intimacies are always shallow. Wells quickly 
dug are quickly dry. We have never been able to 
force matters in thus growing acquainted with new 
scenery. We never can get along but only just so 
fast. Things must begin to be familiar before we feel 
their full meaning ; and familiarity comes not by dun- 
ning and questioning, not by .putting at things, as 
a burglar would at a'lock, punching and screwing, 
but by a natural and gradual opening of things to us, 
by a growing sensibility in us to them. For there is 
always to be an education. Man is forever a disciple, 
and not a master, before nature. He that knows 
more than nature does about beauty will get very 
little help from her. 



SECONB SUMMER LETTER. 43 

The eye is a daguerrotype-plate. It is set to re- 
ceive pictures, not compose or paint them. The art 
of seeing well is not to think about seeing. Let 
your eye alone. Let it go a§ clouds go, floating 
hither and thither at their will. Things will come 
to you if you are patient and receptive. No man 
knows what he sees, but only what he has seen. One 
looks at a great many things, but sees only a few ; 
and those things which come back to him spontane- 
ously, which rise up as pictures, afterwards, are the 
things which he really saw. 

There is a time for exact study, and sharp exami- 
nation, and all that ; but it is not in summer vaca- 
tions, of which I am speaking, when a man is looking 
at nature for no other purpose than rich, ripe enjoy- 
ment. 

Yet, amid this tranquil, dreaming, gazing life, one 
cannot always be quite as serene as he would. For 
example, this morning, while the dew was yet on 
the grass, word came that " Charley had got away." 
Now Charley is a most important member of the 
family, and as shrewd a horse as ever need be. Late- 
ly he had found out the diiference between being 
harnessed by a boy and a man. Accordingly, on sev- 
eral occasions, as soon as the halter dropped from his 
head, and before the bridle could take its place, he 
proceeded to back boldly out of the stable, in spite 
of the stout boy pulling with all his might at his 
mane and ears. This particular morning, we were 
to put a passenger friend on board the cars at 8.10, 
— it was now 7.30. Out popped Charley from his 
stall like a cork from a bottle, and lo ! some fifty 
acres there were in which to exercise his legs and 



44 EYES AND EAES. 

ours, to say notliing of temper and ingenuitj. First, 
the lady with a measure of oats attempted to do the 
thing by bribing him genteelly. Not he ! He had no 
objection to the oats, none to the hand, until it came 
near his head, then off he sprang. After one or two 
trials, we dropped the oats, and went at it in good 
earnest, — called all the boys, headed him off this 
way, ran him out of the growing oats, drove him 
into the upper lot, and out of it again. We got him 
into a corner with great pains, and he got himself 
out of it without the least trouble. He would dash 
through a line of six or eight whooping boys, with 
as little resistance as if they had been so many mos- 
quitos ! Down he ran to the lower side of the lot, 
and down we all walked after him. Up he ran to the 
upper end of the lot, and up we all walked after him, 
— too tired to run. 0, it was glorious fun — to him ! 
The sun was hot. The cars were coming, and we 
had two miles to ride to the depot ! He did enjoy it, 
and we did not. We resorted to expedients, — opened 
wide the great gate of the barnyard, and essayed to 
drive him in, and we did it too — almost ; for he ran 
close up to it, — and just sailed past, with a laugh as 
plain on his face as ever horse had ! Man is vastly 
superior to a horse in many respects. But running, 
on a hot summer day, in a twenty-acre lot, is not one 
of them ! We got him by the brook, and, while he 
drank, how leisurely ! we started up and succeeded 
in just missing our grab at his mane ! Now comes 
another splendid run. His head was up, his eye flash- 
ing, his tail streamed out like a banner, and glancing 
his head this way and that, right and left, he allowed 
us to come on to the brush corner ; from whence, in 



SNOW POWER. 45 

a few moments, he allowed us to emerge, and come 
afoot after him down to the barn again. But luck 
will not hold forever, even with horses. He dashed 
down a lane, and we had him ! But as soon as he 
saw the gate closed, and perceived the state of the 
case, how charmingly he behaved ; allowed us to come 
up and bridle him without a movement of resistance, 
and affirmed by his whole conduct that it was the 
merest sport in the world, all this seeming disobe- 
dience ; and to him we have no doubt it was ! We 
had but seventeen minutes before car time. But we 
made the best use of it that we could. 

The very best method of catching a nimble and 
roguish horse in a twenty or fifty acre lot is — not 
to let him get away from you ! As to the tranquil 
and leisurely method of examining nature, we shall 
defer further remarks uatil we are cool. 




SNOW POWER. 

S there anything in the world so devoid of 
all power as a snow-flake ? It has no life. 
It is not organized. -It is not even a posi- 
tive thing, but is formed negatively, by the 
withdrawal of heat from moisture. It forms in 
silence and in the obscurity of the radiant ether, far 
up above eyesight or hand-reach. It starts earth- 
ward so thin, so filmy and unsubstantial, that gravita- 
tion itself seems at a loss to know how to get a hold 
upon it. Therefore it comes down with a wavering 



46 EYES AND EARS. 

motion, half attracted and half let alone. "We have 
sat and watched the fall of snow until our head grew 
dizzy, for it is a bewitching sight to persons specula- 
tively inclined. There is an aimless way of riding 
down, a simple, careless, thoughtless motion, that 
leads you to think that nothing can be more noncha- 
lant than snow. And then it rests upon a leaf, or 
alights upon the ground, with such a dainty step, so 
softly, so quietly, that you almost pity its virgin help- 
lessness. If you reach out your hand to help it, your 
very touch destroys it. It dies in your palm, and de- 
parts, as a tear. Thus, the ancients feigned that — 
let me see, what was it that they feigned ? Lot's 
spouse went into salt. That was not it. Niobe to 
stone, several into vegetables, some into deer ; but 
was nobody changed to a fountain ? Ah yes, it was 
Arethusa. But now that we have hit the thing that 
dimly floated in our memory, it is not a case to the 
point, so we will let Arethusa flow (slide), and return 
to our snow. 

If any one should ask what is the most harmless 
and innocent thing on earth, he might be answered, 
A snow-flake. And yet, in its own way of exerting 
itself, it stands among the foremost powers on earth. 
When it fills the air, the sun cannot shine, the eye 
becomes powerless ; neither hunter nor pilot, guide 
nor watchman, is any better than a blind man. The 
eagle and the mole are on a level of vision. All the 
kings of the earth could not send forth an edict to 
mankind, saying, " Let labor cease." But this white- 
plumed light-infantry clears out the fields, drives men 
home from the highway, and puts half a continent 
under ban. It is a despiser of old landmarks, and 



SNOW POWER. 47 

very quietly unites all properties, covering up fences, 
hiding paths and roads, and doing in one day a work 
which the engineers and laborers of the whole earth 
could not do in years ! 

But let the wind arise, (itself but the movement of 
soft, invisible particles of air,) and how is this peace- 
ful seeming of snow-flakes changed ! In an instant 
the air raves. There is fury and spite in the atmos- 
pliere. It pelts you, and searches you out in every 
fold and seam of your garments. It comes without 
search-warrant through each crack and crevice of 
your house. . It pours over the hills, and lurks down 
in valleys, or roads, or cuts, until in a night it has 
entrenched itself formidably against the most expert 
human strength ; for now, lying in drifts huge and 
wide, it bids defiance to engine and engineer. 

All these thoughts, and a great many others, we 
had leisure to spin, last night, while we lay within two 
miles of Morristown, N. J., beating away at a half- 
mile inclined plane heaped with snow. We look upon 
the engine as the symbol of human skill and power. 
In its summer rush along a dry track it would seem 
literally invincible. It comes roaring up towards you, 
it sweeps gigantically past you, with the wild scream 
of its whistle, waving the bushes and rustling the 
grass and flowers on either side, and filling the air 
with clouds of smoke and dust, and you look upon 
its roaring course gradually dying out of sight and 
hearing as if some supernatural development of Might 
had passed by you in a vision. But now this wonder- 
ful thing is as tame as a wounded bird ; all its spirit 
is gone. No blow is struck. The snow puts forth 
no power. It simply lies still. That is enough. The 



48 EYES AND EARS. 

laboring engine groans and pushes ; backs out, and 
plunges in again ; retreats, and rushes again. 

It becomes entangled. The snow is everywhere. 
It is before it and behind it. It penetrates the whole 
engine, is sucked up in the draft, whirls in sheets 
into the engine-room ; torments the cumbered wheels, 
clogs the joints, and, packing down under the drivers, 
it fairly lifts the ponderous engine off from its feet, 
and strands it across the track ! Well done, snow ! 
That was a notable victory ! Thou mayest well con- 
sent now to yield to scraper and snow-plough ! 

However, it was not our engine that got off the 
track, but another one beyond Morristown. Ours 
could not get off nor get along. It could only push 
and stop. The pushing was a failure, the stopping 
was very effectual. It kept us till nine o'clock before 
|re reached the lecture-room. But the audience had 
waited with wonderful patience till we got there, and 
then, with a patience even more exemplary, till we 
got through — at half past ten. 

In the morning, returning, we gloried over the last 
night's struggle ; and shot with a comfortable velocity 
down the inclined plane, up which we had vainly toiled 
in the darkness and snow but so few hours before. 

In a few weeks another silent force will come forth. 
And a noiseless battle will ensue, in which this now 
victorious army of flakes shall be itself vanquished. 
A rain-drop is stronger than a snow-flake. One by 
one the armed drops will dissolve the crystals and let 
forth the spirit imprisoned in them. Descending 
quickly into the earth, the drops shall search the roots, 
and give their breasts to their myriad mouths. The 
bud shall open its eye, the leaf shall lift up its head, 



•' THE MOUNTAIN FAKM TO THE SEA-SIDE FAKM. 49 

the grass shall wave its spear, and the forests hang 
out their banners ! How significant is this silent, 
gradual, but irresistible power of rain and snow, of 
moral truth in this world ! '' For as the rain cometh 
down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not 
thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring 
forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and 
bread to the eater ; so shall my word be that goeth 
forth out of my mouth : it shall not return unto me 
void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and 
it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.'' 

* 




THE MOUNTAIN FARM TO THE SEA-SIDE FARM. 

Lenox, August 24, 1855. 

Y DEAR Doctor " C." : — Allow your friends 
to congratulate you upon the acquisition of 
a sea- side farm. For although it cannot be 
compared with a mountain farm, having too 
much sand and too little loam, yet any farm, even a 
sea-side farm, is better than none. Indeed, it hath 
advantages, now that I bethink me. The salt air is 
supposed to favor plums, or rather to be hostile to the 
curculio, which is the chief scourge of that excellent 
fruit. And then you have your market close at 
hand. You can draw out a breakfast or catch a din- 
ner at a few moments' warning. Should an imex- 
pected squad of visitors arrive, and the anxious 
housewife declare the coop empty, the butcher neg- 
lectful, the veal and lamb all gone, you have only to 



50 EYES AND EARS. 

say, " Wait a moment, my dear, I know the very rock 
around whicli black-fish love to linger." In a half- 
hour you return, your basket heavy with yet flapping 
fish, eager to be cooked into usefulness. Then, too, 
you can keep a boat. You are not far, I presume, 
from Saybrook. No, I mean Stonington. But that 
Saybrook Platform was running in my head, and I got 
the wrong word. You knew, doubtless, that Stoning- 
ton was famous for yachting. You knew that vener- 
able divines thought it not inconsistent with their 
cloth to own a fast boat, and to win the first prize at 
a regatta. Why not ? What is more innocent than 
sailing, unless it be rowing ? No cruelty is enacted ; 
no muscles are overstrained. And what sight upon 
earth is more exceedingly beautiful than a fleet of 
snowy yachts, blown like sea-gulls across the swelling 
water ? Of course you will own a boat, even if you 
do not join the club. You will often choose to see 
how your bit of ground looks from a liquid stand- 
point. You will often cool your summer afternoons 
by the breezes off shore, and seek the ocean air long 
before it bears its coolness in upon the land. It is 
a very noble thing to see the sun go down upon a 
golden sea, whose tremulous swells and fretting crests 
flash the glory from wave to wave, and, breaking up 
the broad sheet of red light into myriads of sparkles 
and fiery circles, play with it, tossing it up and down, 
hither and thither, as if it were a liquid floating on 
the sea. Do you know how to manage a boat ? to 
row, to scull, to set sail, to reef or take in sail ? Pray 
be careful. Do not carry too much sail. I have long 
been of opinion that men and ships in our day carry 
too much top-hamper. While the wind is gentle you 



THE MOUNTAIN FARM TO THE SEA-SIDE FAEM. 51 

may spread eyerything ; but these crank hulls and 
enormous sails are very tempting to capricious squalls, 
and some day, as you sit with your hand on the tiller, 
dreaming out a sermon, under which your good peo- 
ple will perhaps dream too, down will come a sudden 
swoop, and with one rattle and plunge you will be all 
overboard ! Never go out without a life-preserver 
under your arms. It is awkward, to be sure, to sit 
trussed up with these inflated air-ruffles under one's 
arms ; but it will be yet more awkward to flounder 
about in the water without them, especially if you 
cannot swim. 

Shall you raise your own oysters ? Do you intend 
to dig y(?hr own clams ? Have you enough kelp 
growing about your rocks to yield the needed manure 
for your sandy soil ? Do your exhausted pastures 
do better in pennyroyal or mullein ? Do you intend 
to use white-fish for enriching your garden ? If so, 
pray plough tliem in deep, or you will be in bad odor 
with all your friends. People will say you are not 
sound ; that you have a taint. 

Excuse these freedoms. They are fraternal. I am 
all too glad that you have a farm at all. A sea-side 
farm will bring you back toward both the patriarchs 
and the apostles, for the one tilled the soil and the 
other fished the sea, and you can do both. May the 
surf sing you to sleep with its undying anthems ! 
May the storms that awaken your midnights with the 
thunder of waves and the rush of awful winds bring 
no shriek to your ear of shipwrecked men ; and no 
visions to your uneasy sleep of drenched and drown- 
ing creatures, swept from the deck, and sinking to 
the bottom, aimlessly reaching out and clutching the 



62 EYES AND EARS. 

"Waters. Rather may the storm proclaim to you ever- 
more the majesty and might of Him who rideth upon 
the winds, who sitteth King upon the floods! 

And as a ship is dandled on the bosom of the 
boundless sea like a child upon its mother's knee, and 
is sheeted with the silver light of morning or flooded 
with the gold of evening, glistening all the hours 
between in the unbounded light that God pours in 
eternal streams from the heavenly spheres, so may 
you never see such an airy thing, without a sweet and 
blessed utterance, — "Thus doth God convoy upon 
the sea of life those who trust in him ! For no ship 
there is of human heart, caught in storm or troubled 
sea, that hath not its Christ, ready to be Uroused to 
calm the sea and hush the wind ! " 

I forgot to ask, in the earnestness of my congratu- 
lations, whether the farm is yours ? Whether it is 
paid for? I hope the deeds are recorded, without 
mortgage or lien of any kind. I hope no notes are 
drawing interest. No blister draws sharper than In- 
terest does. Of all industries, none is comparable to 
that of Interest. It works day and night, in fair 
weather and in foul. It has no sound in its footsteps, 
but travels fast. It gnaws at a man's substance with 
invisible teeth. It binds industry with its film, as a 
fly is bound upon a spider's web. Debt rolls a man 
over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting 
him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged 
interest devours him. Tliere is no crop that can 
afford to pay interest money on a farm. There is 
but one thing raised on a farm like it, and that is 
the Canada thistle, which swarms new plants every 
time you break its root, whose blossoms are prolific, 



THE MOUNTAIN FARM TO THE SEA-SIDE FARM. 53 

and every flower father of a million seeds. Every 
leaf is an awl, every branch a spear, and every single 
plant is like a platoon of bayonets, and a field full of 
them is like an armed host. The whole plant is a 
torment and a vegetable curse. And yet a farmer 
had better make his bed of Canada thistles than at- 
tempt to lie at ease upon interest. 

But you do not need these words. You are a 
shrewd and cautious man. Every dollar is paid. I 
only write to show you what amiable things I would 
have said had you needed them. May no greedy land- 
shark ever grab your land, or pluck it from beneath 
your children's feet ! There may you rest for a few 
weeks each summer, away from the dust of wheels, 
the dust of books, and the dust of gold-seeking men. 
God says some things to the soul in the open field, 
along the sea-shore, or in the twilight forests, which 
he never speaks through books or men. Thank God 
for books ! And yet thank God that the great realm 
of truth lies yet outside of books, too vast to be mas- 
tered by types or imprisoned in libraries. A book 
that leads us away from nature is knavish. Those 
are true books which, like glasses, serve to enlarge 
that which lies outside and beyond themselves. 

May you walk upon your farm, when, silver-haired, 
you lean upon your staff, and see the round sun rise 
or set, day by day, waiting for your own release and 
glorified ascension ! May your children, in after-life, 
have a rich and endless theme of remembrance in the 
word Home. For home should be an oratorio of the 
memory, singing to all our after-life melodies and har- 
monies of old-remembered joy ! 

I do not mean a narrow-faced house in the city, 



54 EYES AND EARS. 

reaching wearily toward the zenith, with perpendic- 
ular stairs, cruel and perilous to much-enduring wo- 
men ; but a real, substantial country home, where 
they may smell the earth, walk upon carpets of pas- 
ture and meadow, that forever laugh at the patterns 
of the loom ! May they hear great trees — let them 
be elm-trees — sing and pray all day and night above 
their heads ! May tliey grow in love with crooked 
brooks winking at you from silver pebbles, with tufted 
willows and tasselled alders, with orchards and birds, 
with all insects, with grasses, flowers, rushes, and 
reeds ! with flags and the stately cat-tail — Stop ! 
There is a brilliant humming-bird singing with his 
wings at the mouths of our honeysuckle blossoms, 
just come for his morning draught. Beautiful fel- 
low ! you are the first at that banquet ! None have 
emptied the nectar. The cups are full of untasted 
sweets. See ! The flowers do not even quiver as he 
sounds their depths, so skilled is he to hang poised 
before them and carry his long bill to the very hidden 
seat of honey. No table is to be spread for thee, no 
dishes cleaned after thy meal, no servants run to serve 
thee, no chimney reeks for thine appetite. There is 
not a fly or moth the less for thy feeding ; no seeds 
are plucked out of the feathery cells. God calleth 
thee by the voice of flowers, and thou art served with 
cups more rare than ever Cellini carved for the Med- 
ici. Up springs the little winged jewel, andj" forsaking 
the honeysuckle, he hangs right before my whidow, 
eying me with his bright eye, as if pitying me for not 
being a humming-bird ! And surely I should like to 
have a merry bout with you through the air, glancing 
through the trees, searching all odorous places, living 



THE MOUNTAIN FAEM TO THE SEA-Sn)E FAEM. 55 

upon flower-digested dew. And yet, sucking floral 
nectar and wheeling through sun-flashes must be but 
an empty life ! Good for an hour, but not for a life ; 
yet nobler natures there are that do less than that for 
life. But perhaps my pen attracts him. He has a fit 
of literature. Ah, sir, if it were Longfellow's, Bry- 
ant's, or Tennyson's pen, you might well suck rare 
honey from the quill. Mine, I fear, would be a little 
acid and somewhat bitter ! He is gone. He did not 
fly, but flashed away ! 

Have you honeysuckles and humming-birds ? Do 
you find singing-robins and bluebirds on the shore ? 
Never mind, you have sea-gulls and kingfishers, and 
now and then, doubtless, an emigrant crow calls out 
to you from the pine-trees. Do you think gulls sing 
as finely as wrens, greenlets, or bobolinks ? 

What is the particular grievance on your farm ? 
Is it nettles ? Is it mosquitos ? What is it ? Some- 
thing has "stirred you up, or you would not have be- 
gun your epistle by attacking my dear little moun- 
tain farm ! At first I was stirred up to resent the 
indignity. I fancied I could see the maples laughing ; 
the elms and beeches curled their leaves and lips at 
the idea of the scrubby trees that exist, but do not 
grow, in the salt spray of the sea-side. The thick, 
plushy, succulent grass, in whose veins, had I a cow's 
eye, I could doubtless see milk and butter flowing, 
the red-top and herdsgrass, when they heard me read 
your opening lines, winked and ogled each other 
with laughing, Winking dew-drops, in very derision of 
the poor wiry salt-marsh hay, which doubtless is so 
salt that cows give butter and cheese already salted 
enough. Shall such a place be contemptuous of my 



56 EYES AND EARS. 

emerald liill, which this valley holds up upon her 
bosom like a glistening jewel ? And so I stirred my- 
self to reply, and sat me down at the table, before the 
open window ; but, as I looked forth, the air spake 
peace. The distant trees stood in peace. The green 
mountains abode at rest. I saw shadows cast blackly 
down upon them, and traverse their hollowed sides 
and ridged tops. But they peacefully bore the blot, 
and let them pass unrebuked away. The shadows 
of storms do not hurt the mountains ; nor do the 
shadows of slander or untruth harm men. And so 
I looked across the sloping lawn, and saw the tranquil 
lake, nursing in its bosom all the fenced farms that 
lie upon its thither side, and all around the horizon 
stood the silent mountains ; and above them all, 
mightily outstretched, the blue and gray dome of 
sky. All thoughts of conflict forsook me. Shall I 
be turmoiled in behalf of things which will never lose 
their own peace ? They know their strefigth, and 
when storms rail they never answer back again. 
They know their worth of beauty, and neither boast 
nor defend it. They abide in stillness. 

Slit tell me, what have you instead of mountains ? 
All around us, on every side, stand innumerable piles, 
tree-clad, rock-built, carved and scarped along their 
slopes by ages of rain. Rain ! whose soft architec- 
tural hands have power to cut stones and chisel to 
shapes of grandeur the very mountains as no artist 
could ever do ! On their tops clouds love to walk or 
brood. The hills stand waiting for us in the morn- 
ing, with their sides draped with mist-lace, wrought 
in mighty convolutions and patterns, such as royalty 
could never command from Mechlin or Valenciennes. 



THE MOUNTAIN FARM TO THE SEA-SmE FARM. 57 

In a few hours they are folded and laid away in that 
great wardrobe above, from which such rare and 
endless dresses are drawn by the subtle hand of 
Nature. In these mountains are dells and gorges, 
caves and chasms, brooks and loud-crying torrents. 
There are forests that sing to themselves their grand 
old songs night and day, and none hears but God, 
into whose ear comes, doubtless, every sound of earth, 
— the mvirmur of leaves and the chanting of reeds, 
the whisper of grass-blades, and the very silence of 
flowers, as well as the voices of human sorrow and 
thunder of the city ! And then the afternoon and 
evening phantasms of the hills ! Who shall speak 
the nameless hues which the atmosphere spreads upon 
the evening hills in mountain regions ? What fleet 
upon your ocean ever fills the eye as do the cloud- 
fleets the ethereal ocean in these mountain regions ? 
There go very continents, not anchored like Europe 
or the Americas, but sailing quietly with all their 
mountains and valleys. Only think of the Alps, 
some fine morning, starting off" upon a tour of the 
continent ! The Apennines, the Andes, old Chimbo- 
razo, or the Himalayas, out upon a tour ! Yet there 
they are, as sure as you have fancy in your eye, 
parading the heavens, and sunning their fiery peaks 
above old Greylock, or flashing the afternoon light 
with such dazzling whiteness that the eye can hardly 
look upon them ! 

But I forgot that you too have these airy moun- 
tains. The sweet ministration of a common atmos- 
phere is yours too. You have my sun, my moon, 
my stars. The morning which gems our hills, kin- 
dles the flaming bosom of your ocean. One noon 

3* 



68 EYES AND EARS. 

glows above iis both. The angel that brings sleep 
to me hovers above you. The same heaven lies be- 
yond tliis visible for us both ; the same Saviour, and 
the same everlasting rest ! May no joy by the way 
or entanglement hold us ; and when we look to- 
gether from its walls, we shall not be able to discern, 
for their insignificance, our proud little farms ! Yea, 
the whole earth will have dwindled, and would have 
gone out, were it not for one glowing spot, — Calvary. 
For that mountain it shall stand forever, and, glowing 
through all space, shine as a mighty jewel that God 

hath set as a memorial of liis everlasting love ! 

* 



HAYING. 




r is five o'clock. The morning is clear and 
fresh. A thin blue film of mist hovers 
over the circuit of the Housatonic along 
the mountain belt. A hundred birds — 
yes, five hundred — are singing as birds never sing 
except in the morning. A few chimneys send up a 
slow, wreathing column of smoke, which grows every 
moment paler as the new-kindled fire below burns 
brighter. In our house the girls are astir, and the 
mystery of breakfast developing. The little dog is 
so glad after the lonesome night to see you, that he 
surfeits you with frolic. The men are in the barn 
feeding the horses, and getting everything ready for 
work. 

The clouds hang low on the mountains on every 



HAYING. 59 

side. Their ragged edges comb the mountain-sides, 
and look as if they must sway the trees in their 
course. Yet they move with such soft and drowsy 
measure, that not a leaf stirs in their path. Will it 
rain to-day ? The heavens overhead look like it. The 
clouds around the mountains hang low, as if there 
were rain coming. But the barometer says, No. 
Then a few rounds with the scythe before breakfast, 
just by way of getting the path open. There they 
go, a pretty pair of mowers ! The blinking dew-drops 
on the grass-tops wink at them and pitch headlong 
under the stroke of the swinging scythe. How low 
and musical is the sound of a scythe in its passage 
through a thick pile of grass ! It has a craunching, 
mellow, murmuring sound, right pleasant to hear. 
The grass, rolled over in a swath to the left, green 
and wet, lies like a loosely-corded cable, vast and half 
twined. Around the pierce, step by step go the men, 
and the work is fairly laid out and begun. There 
sounds the horn ! Breakfast is ready. A most use- 
ful and salutary custom is that of breakfast. One 
may work with the hands before breakfast, but not 
much with the head. The machine must be wound 
up. The blue must be taken out of your spirits and 
the gray out of your eyes. A cup of coffee, — real 
coffee, — home-browned, home-ground, home-made, 
that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to 
a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that 
never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, 
thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy 
nor frothing on the Java : such a cup of coffee is a 
match for twenty blue devils, and will exorcise them 
all. Involuntarily one draws in his breath by the 



60 EYES AND EAES. 

nostrils. The fragrant savor fills his senses with 
pleasure ; for no coffee can be good in the mouth that 
does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the 
nostrils. All the children are farmer's boys for the 
occasion. Were Sevastopol built of bread and cakes, 
these are the very engineers who would take it. 
Bless their appetites ! It does one good to see grow- 
ing children eat with a real hearty appetite. Moun- 
tain air, a free foot in grassy fields and open groves, 
plain food and enough of it, — these things kill the 
lilies in the cheek and bring forth roses. 

But we must make haste, and make hay while the 
sun shines. Already John Dargan is there whetting 
his scythe. John, tough as a knot, strong as steel, 
famous in all the region for ploughing, and equally 
skilful at mowing, turning his furrow and cutting 
his swath alike smoothly and evenly. If Ireland has 
any more such farmers to spare, they may come on 
in spite of all the Know-Nothings. The Man of 
the Farm strikes in first, as being the head man in 
this dominion, and John follows, and away they go 
right through the clover and herdsgrass, up the hill, 
toward the sun. The grass is full of dew, which 
quivers in the sunlight, and winks and flashes by 
turns all the colors of a rainbow. We follow after, as 
one that limps, having never attained the art of mow- 
ing ; and being a late apprentice and mere learner, 
we prefer to let our betters go first. One swath will 
satisfy our zeal, and we shall then fall into the ranks 
of the spectators. Round and round the field they 
go, with steady swing, the grass plat growing less at 
every turn. 

What a miniature forest is this tall grass full of 



HAYING. 61 

nnder-brusli clover ! How full of population ! Vast 
communities dwell here of which we have but little 
knowledge, and for which we have but little sym- 
pathy. All manner of grasshoppers, field-crickets, 
bugs of every shape and color, worms, birds, young 
and old, and nameless life, swarm through these 
grassy forests, past all counting. One imagines the 
sudden surprise with which the crash of the scythe 
overthrows all their structures, obliterates their paths, 
destroys their haunts and societies, and buries thou- 
sands of them under each swath of grass. All the 
bright webs of spiders that sit up late at nights, the 
virgin webs that have as yet caught nothing but dew, 
and have caught a whole lapful of that, are swept in 
one stroke. A mower will, in half a day, disarrange 
the plans of myriads of his fellow-creatures, walk- 
ing a conqueror through their desolated cities and 
dwellings, without once thinking, even, that he has 
wrought his task amid such multitudinous company. 
We, following on, turn over the grass, and watch the 
liberated captives, that take their disasters very pa- 
tiently. Spiders forget to be voracious. Insects run 
over spiders without fear. All herd together in peace, 
made by a common misfortune. So we have read 
that bears, wolves, panthers, deer, rabbits, and foxes 
are sometimes pent up on some high ground, islanded 
by a sudden freshet, and forget their destructive 
habits, and live together peacefully until the receding 
waters let them forth again. 

While we are musing upon the fate of bugs, a 
shout from the boys informs us that the mowers have 
disclosed a meadow-lark's nest. Sure enough, there 
goes the gibbering bird over into the next field, to 



62 EYES AND EARS. 

complain and mourn over her most unexpected los^s. 
Five speckled eggs are not so easily laid as to be given 
up without a thought ! How many fond hopes are here 
crushed by one swing of Time's scythe, — or John's 
scythe it was, I believe ! They are warm and smooth. 
How good they felt to the warm-breasted mother ! 
Here she sat mute, reflecting upon the joyful times 
when she should inform her mate that the shells were 
broken, and both of them should bring a dilapidated 
worm to the ugly-looking mouths .of their callow 
young ! But when did a child ever look ugly to its 
mother ! And larks doubtless think their featherless, 
discolored, yellow-mantled squabs more beautiful than 
full-grown humming-birds. And now the bereaved 
mother is flying upon the fence, and thence to the top 
of a near bush, to see the issue. We carefully put up 
sticks about the nest, and took oaths of humanity 
from all the boys, and caused horse-rakes and cart- 
wheels to respect the nest. But when the grass was 
cleared from the field, and the nest was left wide open 
to the sun, without shade or protection, the owners 
held a council over matters, and resolved to abandon 
the desecrated nest, set the eggs down to profit and 
loss, emigrate to another meadow, and begin life 
again ! After two days' waiting, some of the kind 
friends, without our knowledge, removed the desolate 
nest and placed it upon our writing-table, and there it 
now lies before us, with a vine of green leaves and a 
few spikes of yellow sweet-clover twined about it. 
Poor eggs ! No lark shall ye ever be ! Ye shall not 
shake dew from„ the grass, nor pick worms from the 
earth, nor sing a mournful minor song, as I hear your 
kindred now doing from out of the field before my 
window. 



HAYING. 68 

Meanwhile all the boys have been at work spread- 
ing the grass. The hay-cocks of yesterday have been 
opened. The noon comes on. It is time to house it. 
It is brave work to see men pitching and loading hay. 
We lie down under the apple-trees and exhort them 
all to diligence. We are surprised at any pauses to 
wipe the perspiration from their brows. We are very 
cool. We think haying a beautiful sport. We ad- 
mire to see it going on from our window ! We resist 
all overtures of the scythe and the fork, for we think 
one engaged in the midst of it less favorably situated 
to make calm and accurate observations. 

The day passes and the night. With another morn- 
ing, and that Saturday morning, comes up the sun 
without a single cloud to wipe his face upon. The 
air is clear and crystal. No mist on the river. No 
fleece upon the mountains. Yet the barometer is 
sinking, — has been sinking all night. It has fallen 
more than a quarter of an inch, and continues slowly 
to fall. Our plans must be laid accordingly. We 
will cut the clover which is to be cured in the cock, 
and prepare to get in all of yesterday's mowing be- 
fore two o'clock. Not till about ten o'clock is any 
change seen. Then the sunlight seems pale, though 
no cloud is before it. Some invisible vapor has struck 
through the atmosphere. By and by clouds begin to 
form, — loose, vast, cumbrous, that slowly roll and 
change their unwieldy shapes, and take on every 
shade of color that lies between the darkest leaden 
gray and the most brilliant silver gray. One load we 
roll in before dinner." While catching our hasty meal 
affairs grow critical. The sun is hidden. The noon 
is dark. All hands are summoned. Now if you wish 



64 EYES AND EARS. 

to see pretty working, follow the cart, and see long 
forks leap into the cocks of hay, and to a backward 
lift they spring up, poise a moment in the air, shoot 
forward, and are caught upon the load by the nimble 
John, and in a twinkling are in their place. We 
hear thunder ! Lightnings flash on the horizon. Jim 
and Frank and Henry Sumner are springing at the 
clover, rolling it into heaps and dressing it down so as 
to shed rain. There are no lazy-bones there ! 

On the other side of the road there is a small 
piece of this morning's cut grass lying spread. Even 
we ourselves wake up and go to work. All the girls 
and ladies come forth to the fray. Delicate hands are 
making lively work, raking up the dispersed grass, 
and flying with right nimble steps here and there, 
bent upon cheating the rain of its expected prey. 
And now the long winrows are formed. The last 
load of hay from the other fields has just rolled tri- 
umphantly into the barn ! Down jumps John, with 
fork in hand, and rolls up the winrows into cocks. 
We follow and glean witli the rake. The last one 
is fashioned. A drop pats down on my face. Anoth- 
er, and another. Look at those baseless mountains 
that tower in the west, black as ink at the bottom, 
glowing like snow at the top edges ! What gigantic 
evolutions ! They open, unfold, change form, flash 
lightnings through their spaces, close up tlieir black 
gulfs, and move on with irresistible but silent march 
through the heated air. Far in the north the rain 
has begun to sheet down upon old Greylock ! But 
the sun is shining through the shower, and changing 
it to a golden atmosphere, in which the mountain 
lifts up its head like a glorified martyr amid his per- 



MOTVING-MACHINES AND STEAM-PLOUGHS. 65 

secutions ! Only a look can we spare, and all of us 
run for the house, and in good time. Down comes 
the flood, and every drop is musical. We pity the 
neighbors who, not warned by barometer, are racing 
and chasing to secure their outlying crop. 



MOWING-MACHmES AND STEAM-PLOUGHS. 



Lenox, Angust, 1855. 




UR friend A. B. Allen (and who that works 
or dabbles in the soil does not know him 
and his agricultural establishments) has 
written to us that, if our grass is still stand- 
ing, he will, at his own expense, send up one of his 
new mowing-machines, and give us a day's work with 
it, for he thinks that it is the best machine yet out. 
Alas ! our grass is all cut, except a small strip near 
the White Violet Grove, a gore in the swale on the 
west side of the hill, and some coarse stuff, for litter, 
down in the muck swamp. To be sure, this could be 
cut by a mowing-machine, especially one of which 
our friend says, "It is impossible, I think, now to 
clog the knives even in the wettest, greenest, shortest, 
thickest, finest grass ! " But all the grass left stand- 
ing would not be a mouthful for such an iron fellow, 
and yet why not send the machine up ? Let it remain 
here! We shall have a large second crop on that 
part of the farm which has been deeply ploughed and 
dressed with muck. This slaty loam seems to love 
muck dearly, and holds out its grassy hands in grati- 



66 EYES AND EARS. 

tude for any particle given to it. And then, too, next 
summer we shall be ready for tlie mower. Do not 
hesitate, friend Allen, we will take good care of the 
machine, and if it performs half as well as you affirm, 
and as we believe that it will, we will give tlie world 
the account of its doings in the best English which we 
can command. When shall we look for it ? 

But if Allen's Mower had taken a notion about the 
time we did to come to Lenox, what a world of work 
would have been spared to human muscles ! Here 
are thirty-five or forty acres of grass, over which, in 
half-circles, advancing four or five inclies at a clip, 
the men have crept, shuffling along with their feet, 
crouched and sweating, hot, and tired in the small 
of the back. Two men will mow, say four acres a day, 
besides looking after that which was cut yesterday. 
Here are ten days of work. But throwing out the 
Sabbaths and throwing in the rainy days (which this 
year have striven to wipe out the memory of every 
day of last summer's drought), and there will be at 
least ten days more, or full three weeks of haying; 
i. e. mowing, watching the barometer (that is my 
part of the work), dodging showers, or nesting in the 
dry hay, with the showery west coming down upon 
us with black banners flying and thunder-trumpets 
sounding. However, these occasional matches be- 
tween the storm and the farmer's whole family are 
not the least interesting and exciting of country sports. 
There is no game of ball like it, no rowing-match can 
be compared to it. As for a horse-race, it is a mere 
piece of vulgar cruelty in comparison. 

The farmer, you see, would n't believe the barom- 
eter, and wanted yesterday's mowing to get a few 



MOWING-MACHINES AND STEAM-PLOUGHS, 67 

hours more sun before housing. About three o'clock 
he did not like the looks of things in the west. Away 
went the boys after the brown horses, Major and 
Larry. Old Gray was put before the horse-rake, and 
Frank was told to put in his best kicks to hurry long- 
legged Gray over the field. About four o'clock we 
came forth to see what all this meant. What a bother 
was here ! Maria and Ann and Nelly all with rakes, 
— the sister, wives, the daughter, and the daughters 
big and little, were flying about ; the little boys and 
middling-sized boys, — in all, four ; spry Jim and 
nimble John and the farmer, and last of all, and quite 
undisturbed by any fear of losing hay, we ourself, — 
in all sixteen human creatures, raking, rolling, piling 
up, pitching up, loading, and trimming down the 
precious fodder. 

The rain made haste, and so did we ! We saw it 
-coming down, with the sun straining through it, far in 
the northwest. In a few moments it had covered in 
several hills more. It advanced rapidly from swell to 
swell and from peak to peak. The sunlight went out, 
gray haze ran skirmishing forward before the black 
heavy artillery. Now the mountains west of Lenox, 
Baldhead and all, stood up solemn as death, and as 
dark as night, right against the leaden grayness of the 
rain-cloud. In a moment their tops were caught and 
wrapped round with rain. The mountains are gone 
out. Now the sheeted rain makes at the church-hill, 
and the white belfry disappears ; it comes skipping 
from point to point hitherward. Nothing can turn it 
from its path ! 

Work, boys, work ! We felt a drop on our face, 
and another on our hand. A breath of wind gives a 



68 EYES AND EARS. 

wild puff and dies away and is still. We can hear the 
roar of the rain as it comes through the wood yonder ! 
The birds are all silent there. A single melancholy 
whistle is heard from the north beyond us. The last 
forkful has gone up on the load, and away goes the 
creaking, overloaded wagon, a man on each side hold- 
ing up the towering, swaying mass with propping 
forks. It rises on the barn doorway, it hesitates, it 
touches, it grazes at the top, down sinks John to save 
his head a thump, but bawls out smotheringly from 
the hay at the horses, who jump and slip but spring 
again and buckle to with all their force for a last 
pull ! Up comes the load, it rolls in, and the howling 
rain comes pouring down on the roof, but a little too 
late ! In that race we tliink the farmer had slightly 
the advantage ! 

Let us see ; how did we get to this spot ? Ah, we 
started with a mowing-machine. Well, we wanted to 
say, that if, instead of these slow bat peaceful scythes, 
we had had one of these mowers with iron sinews, 
that is never hurt or tired or sweatv- but rolls quietly 
along over twelve acres a day, and then tucks up its 
knives at night as if it had been out walking for a 
little sport in the grass, how much time would have 
been gained, how much struggle saved, how easily on 
the few fair days — fair, but hot — micht we have 
cut and cured the whole crop without bf^mg chased 
out of the field by storms. 

In that case we should have had our ^'xrley all 
harvested before this. Now it is crinkled, s^nd will 
require twice the labor to secure it. Our xvbcat too 
— spring wheat (not the club-wheat, bought of AX^^n 
& Co., but the Mediterranean or Black-Sea wheat^ . 



MOWING-MACHINES AND STEAM-PLOUGHS. 69 

Crimea wheat, for aught that we know) — would 
have been attended* to before this. Now it is all 
down. Maybe it is sprouted. Perhaps it will mil- 
dew, or it may rust. 

The midge may get into it, the fly will attack it, — 
not our harmless house-fly, a native, every drop of 
whose blood is American, — but that hateful foreign 
fly, which the British brought over with their mer- 
cenary Hessians. We could whip the British and the 
Hessians, but not the Hessian fly. That could never 
be brought to sign articles of peace. As we were 
saying, the midge, the fly, the weevil, the rust, the 
blight, the sprout, — in short, all the desperate mal- 
adies which attack newspapers about the time of 
wheat-harvest, — may be impending over our wheat 
(two acres and a half there are of it), because, for 
the want of a mowing-machine, the grass obliged us 
to neglect the wheat ! But there is some consolation 
on a farm for everything. If it is bad hay weather, 
it is good potato weather. If it is too hot and dry 
for pastures, it is just right for corn. The same rain 
that vexes our first mowing is bringing on the sec- 
ond growth, or rowen. 

We are accustomed to regard the improvements in 
machinery chiefly in their relations to manufacturing 
and locomotion. But nowhere else will a greater 
change be wrought by machinery than upon the farm. 
We are in the infancy of agriculture. 

The knowledge of the elements with which we 
deal, and which compose rocks, soils, plants, and 
animal fibre, that organic chemistry puts into our 
hands, gives direction and accuracy to our processes, 
but does little to abridge manual labor. Mechanics 



70 EYES AND EARS. 

step in at this point, and promise to set men free, 
and to make a servant of iron that will toil for him 
without fatigue, and with quadruple speed. 

Great as is the saving of labor achieved by reapers, 
mowers, threshers, etc., they are all as nothing in 
comparison with that which must come before long, — 
THE STEAM-PLOUGH ! What a revolution would take 
place, when a gang of five or six ploughs, cutting from 
fifteen tq twenty-four inches deep, shall plow from 
thirteen to fifteen acres a day ! A farm of twenty 
acres will then be equivalent to a hundred acres now,. 
A hundred acres so cultivated will yield unexampled 
crops. It will be better for small farmers than it 
would be to make every man a present of four times 
as much land as he h^ad before. 

Then, too, large farming could be carried on with- 
out the drawbacks which now hinder it. A thousand 
acres ploughed, tilled, and reaped by machinery could 
be handled as easily by the proprietor as now he 
handles a hundred acres. 

As yet we have only scratched the surface of the 
earth. We have never fairly harnessed mechanics, 
or made a farmer of science. 

The man who invents a steam-plough, that will turn 
twelve or fifteen acres a day, two feet deep, will be an 
emancipator and civilizer. 

Then labor shall have leisure for culture. Thus 
working and studying shall go hand in hand. Then 
the farmer shall no longer be a drudge ; and work 
shall not exact much, and give but little. Then men 
will receive a collegiate education to fit them for the 
farm, as now they do for the pulpit and the forum, 
and in the intervals of labor, gratefully frequent. 



CITY BOYS IN THE COUNTRY. 71 

they may pursue their studies ; especially will books 
be no longer the product of cities, but come fresh and 
glowing from Nature, from unlopped men, whose side- 
branches, having had room to grow, give the full and 
noble proportions of manhood from top to bottom. 
God speed the plough ! 

p. S. A critic, near at hand, thinks the storm in 
this letter very much like the one in the last. It is 
not the same storm, but another just like it. Nature 
has not been afraid of repeating her storms every 
day ; and surely we should not be blamed for doing 
our storms once a week. 




CITY BOYS IN THE COUNTRY. 

Mountain Rest, Matteawan, September I, 1857. 

HIS is the first day of autumn. Summer is 
gone ; gone how swiftly and unperceivedly ! 
It has seemed to me like a green leaf float- 
ing upon a silent river. It came quietly 
toward me from above, then moved past in a shadowy 
and spectre-like way, and now has floated down and 
gone past the bend in the river, and I shall see the 
summer leaf no more. In like manner, the gold 
leaf of autumn has been glistening in the distance, 
and drawing daily nearer. It too, in turn, will glow 
and shine upon the spotted stream of time and go 
past. Then comes winter. It hath no leaves to give. 
It offers frost particles and flakes of snow instead. 



72 EYES AiTD EARS. 

To-day is a goblet-day. The whole heavens have been 
mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, 
and the crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is 
like ethereal drinking. It is a luxury simply to 
exist. The whole air is full of inarticulate music. 
Birds have given way to the autumnal choir. Crick- 
ets, locusts, and katydids are chirping and harping 
away at the most astonishing rate. 

When birds sing they never fill the air. They sing 
in multiplied voices, and yet there is always seeming 
room for more. But katydids and crickets surfeit 
the air. They are "mixture-stops" of not four or five 
sounds, but forty. Unlike birds' singing, there is no 
individualization. It is a vast body of sound. Some- 
times one imagines them as jolly fiddlers at a revel ; 
and we can see them lying back and fiddling with 
tlH most enjoying relish. At other times, they re- 
mind you of an orchestra in the anteroom chording 
their instruments. They seem to twang and thumb, 
to scrape and draw, without ever coming to concert- 
pitch or getting ready for the overture. Then, again, 
one fancies that they are fairies chattering in the 
grass, and imagines as best he can what cricket mirth 
must be ; what grasshopper rivalries amount to ; 
what locust passions and sentiments are. It would 
be curious to look at life from their point of view. 
Their notions of man would be a chapter in mental 
philosophy full as wise and profitable as the most of 
those which have amused sober sects, and fooled them 
into philosophy. 

Probably there are dandy grasshoppers, which strut 
about in the grass, exhibiting their graceful legs ; 
athletes, proud of the prodigious muscle of their 



CITY BOYS m THE COUNTRY. 73 

thighs ; amorous locusts, that execute all fantastic 
observances fitted to their state. Are there not 
castes and ranks, and distinctions of society, in the 
grass as well as above it ? Shining crickets, jet, hand- 
some, — these are doubtless despising the rusty ash- 
colored fellow, who knows no better than to wear the 
jacket which Nature made for him. But we sat 
down to write upon something besides these stridulous 
gentlemen of the grass orchestra; something quite 
as noisy in their way, but of a good deal more inter- 
est. We mean Boys ! 

A boy is a piece of existence quite separate from 
all things else, and deserves separate chapters in the 
natural history of man. The real lives of boys are 
yet to be written. The lives of pious and good boys, 
which enrich the catalogues of great publishing so- 
cieties, resemble a real boy's life about as much as 
a chicken picked and larded, upon a spit, and ready 
for delicious eating, resembles a free fowl in the fields. 
With some few honorable exceptions, they are impos- 
sible boys, with incredible goodness. Their piety is 
monstrous. A man's experience stuffed into a little 
boy is simply monstrous. And we are soundly scep- 
tical of this whole school of juvenile pate de foie gras 
piety. Apples that ripen long before their time are 
either diseased or worm-bitten. 

So long as boys are babies, how much are they 
cherished ! But by and by the cradle is needed for 
another. From the time that a babe becomes a boy, 
until he is a young man, he is in an anomalous con- 
dition, for which there is no special place assigned in 
Nature. They are always in the way. They are al- 
ways doing something to call down rebuke. They are 

4 



74 EYES AND EAES. 

inquisitive as monkeys, and meddlesome just where 
you don't wish them to be. Boys have a period of 
mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox. 
They invade your drawers, mix up your tooth-powder 
with hair-oil ; pull your laces and collars from their 
repositories ; upset your ink upon invaluable manu- 
script ; tear up precious letters, scatter your wafers, 
stick everything up with experimental sealing-wax ; 
and spoil all your pens, in the effort at spoiling all 
your paper. 

Poor boys ! What are they good for ? It is an un- 
fathomable mystery that we come to our manhood 
(as the Israelites reach Canaan) through the wilder- 
ness of boyhood. They are always wanting some- 
thing they must not have, going where they ought 
not to be, coming where they are not wanted, saying 
the most awkward things at the most critical times. 
They will tell lies, and, after infinite pains to teach 
them the obligations of truth, they give us the full 
benefit of frankness and literalness, by blurting out 
before company a whole budget of family secrets. 
Would you take a quiet nap ? Slam-bang go a whole 
bevy of boys through the house ! Has the nervous 
baby at length, after all manner of singings, trottings, 
soothings, and maternal bosom-opiates, just fallen 
asleep ? Be sure an unmannerly boy will be on hand 
to bawl out for permission to do something or other, 
which he has been doing all day without dreaming of 
leave. 

Who shall describe the daily battle of the hair 
and the bath, the ordeal of aprons for the table, the 
placing and moving up, and the endless task of good 
manners ? If there is one saint that ought to stand 



CITY BOYS IN THE COUNTRY. 75 

higher than another on the calendar, it is a patient, 
sweet-tempered children's nurse ! Talk of saintship, 
simply because a man lived in a cave, and was ab- 
stemious, or because he died bravely at the stake ! 
What are fagots of fiery sticks for a few hot mo- 
ments compared to those animated fagots which con- 
sume nurses and governesses for months and years, 
to say nothing of the occasional variety of parental 
coals ! 

Are we, then, not on the boys' side ? To be sure 
we are. It is not their fault that they are boys, nor 
that older people are not patient. 

The restless activity of boys is their necessity. To 
restrain it is to thwart Nature. "We need to provide 
for it. Not to attempt to find amusement for them, 
but to give them opportunity to amuse themselves. 
It is astonishing to see how little it requires to satisfy 
a boy-nature. 

First in the list we put strings. What grown-up 
people find in a thousand forms of business and so- 
ciety, a boy secures in a string ! He ties up the 
door for the exquisite pleasure of untying it again. 
He harnesses chairs, ties up his own fingers, halters 
his neck, coaxes a lesser urchin to become his horse, 
and drives stage, — which, with boys, is the top of 
human attainment. Strings are wanted for snares, 
for bows and arrows, for whips, for cat's-cradles, for 
kites, for fishing, and a hundred things more than 
I can recollect. A knife is more exciting than a 
string, but does not last so long, and is not so vari- 
ous. After a short time it is lost, or broken, or has 
cut the fingers. But a string is the instrument of 
endless devices, and within the management and in- 



76 EYES AND EAES. 

genuity of a boy. The first article that parents should 
lay in, on going into the country, is a large hall of 
twine. The boys must not know it. If they see a 
whole ball the charm is broken. It must come forth 
mysteriously, unexpectedly, and as if there were no 
more ! 

For indoors, next, we should place upon the list 
pencils and white paper. At least one hour in every 
day will be safely secured by that. A slate and pencil 
are very good. But as children always aspire to do 
what men do, they account the unused half of a letter 
and a bit of pencil to be worth twice as much as any 
slate. 

Upon the whole, we think a safe stream of water 
near by affords the greatest amount of enjoyment 
among all natural objects. There is wading and wash- 
ing ; there is throwing of stones, and finding of 
pebbles ; there is engineering, of the most laborious 
kind, by which stone and mud are made to dam up 
the water, or to change the channel. Besides these 
things, boys are sensitive to that nameless attraction 
of beauty which specially hovers about the sides of 
streams ; and though they may not recognize the 
cause, they are persuaded of the fact that they are 
very happy when there are stones with gurgling water 
around them, shady trees, and succulent undergrowth, 
moss, and water-cress, insect, bird, and all the popu- 
lation of cool water-courses. 

But boys are not always boys. All that is in us 
in leaf is in them in bud. The very yearnings, the 
imaginings, the musings, yea, the very questions, 
which occupy our later years as serious tasks, are 
found in the occasional hours of boyhood. We have 



CITY BOYS IN THE COUNTRY. TT 

scarcely heard one moral problem discussed in later 
life that is not questioned by children. The creation 
of the world, the origin of evil, divine foreknowledge, 
human liberty, the immortality of the soul, and vari- 
ous other elements of elaborate systems, belong to 
childhood. Men trace the connections of truths, and 
their ethical applications and relations, but the simple 
elements of the most recondite truths seem to have 
gained in them very little by the progress of years. 
Indeed, all truths whose root and life are in the Infi- 
nite are like the fixed stars, which become no larger 
under the most powerful telescope than to the natural 
eye. Their distance is too vast to make any appreci- 
able variation in magnitude possible. They are mere 
points of light. 

Boys have their soft and gentle words too. You 
would suppose by the morning racket that nothing 
could be more foreign to their nature than romance 
and vague sadness, such as ideality produces in 
adults. But boys have hours of great sinking and 
sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly 
needful to them. 

It is worthy of notice, how soon a little kindness, a 
little consideration for their boy-nature, wins their con- 
fidence and caresses. Every boy wants some one older 
than himself to whom he may go in moods of confi- 
dence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want 
by grown people, and the treating of children as little 
rattling, noisy imps, not yet subject to heart-throes 
because they are so frolicsome in general, is a fertile 
source of suffering. One of the most common forms 
of selfishness is that which refuses to recognize any 
experience as worthy of attention if it lies in a sphere 



78 EYES AND EARS. 

below our own. Not only ought a man to humble 
himself as a little child, but also to little children. 

A thousand things are blamed in them simply 
because, measured by our manhood standard, they 
are unfit, whereas upon the scale of childhood they 
are congruous and proper. We deny children's re- 
quests often upon the scale of our own likings and 
dislikings. We attempt to govern them by a man's 
regimen, and not by a child's. 

And yet, badgered, snubbed, and scolded on the 
one hand ; petted, flattered, and indulged on the 
other, — it is astonishing how many children work 
their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents 
and friends. Human nature has an element of great 
toughness in it. When we see what men are made 
of, our wonder is, not that so many children are 
spoiled, but that so many are saved. 

The country is appointed of God to be the chil- 
dren's nursery ; the city seems to have been made 
by malign spirits to destroy children in. They are 
cramped for room, denied exercise, restrained of 
wholesome liberty of body, or, if it be allowed, it is 
at the risk of morals. 

Children are half educated who are allowed to be 
familiar with the scenes and experiences of the open 
country. For this, if for no other reason, parents 
might make an effort every year to remove their 
children for some months from the city to the coun- 
try. For the best effect, it is desirable that they 
should utterly leave the city behind them. It is ab- 
surd to go into the country to find all the luxuries of 
a city. It is to get rid of them that they go. Men 
are cumbered and hampered by too much convenience 



A TBIE AT THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 79 

in the city. They grow artificial. They lose a relish 
for natural beauty and the simple occupations of rural 
life. Oar children need a separate and special train- 
ing in country education. We send them to the 
Polytechnique for eight months. But for four months 
we send them to God's school in the openness and 
simplicity of the country. A diploma in this school 
will be of service to body and mind while life lasts. 



A TIME AT THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 




p'TER a week or two among the White 
Mountains, I have concluded not to write 
about them. They are a university of moun- 
tains. One must enter regularly, pursue 
the course of study, and graduate, before he is worthy 
of a mountaineer's degree, — and before he under- 
takes to write in any wortliy manner. As I am only 
a freshman, and in the first term at that, I do not pro- 
pose to set forth and write out the whole of the White 
Mountains. In riding along these green lanes, we 
often break off — or twist off, rather — a branch of 
birch, and, bruising the skin, carry it for the sake 
of its delightful fragrance. In like manner, I will 
give you just a sprig of my experience. 

The descent from the top of Mount Washington, 
toward the Gibbs House, had in it one half-hour of 
extreme pleasure and two hours of common pleasure. 
After leaving the summit hill, I shot ahead of the 
fifteen or twenty in the party, and rode along the 



80 EYES AND EARS. 

ridge that separates the eastern and western valleys. 
Beginning at our very feet as little crevices or pet« 
ty gorges, the valleys widened, and deepened, and 
stretched forth, until on either side they grew dim 
in the distance, and the eye disputed with itself 
whether it was lake or cloud that spotted the hori- 
zon with silver. The valleys articulated with this 
ridge as ribs with a backbone. As I rode along this 
jagged and broken path, except of my horse's feet 
there was not a single sound. There was no wind. 
There was nothing for it to sing through if there had 
been ever so much. There were no birds. There 
were no chirping insects. I saw no insects except 
spiders, that here, as everywhere, seemed well fed 
and carried plump bellies. There was perfect peace, 
perfect stillness, universal brightness, the fulness of 
vision, and a wondrous glory in the heaven and over 
all the earth. The earth was to me as it were un- 
peopled. I saw neither towns nor cities, neither 
houses nor villages, neither smoke nor motion nor 
sign of life. I stopped, and imagined, that I was as 
they were who first explored this ridgy wilderness, 
and knew that as far as eye could reach not a white 
man lived. And yet these thoughts were soon chased 
away by the certainty that under that silvery haze 
were thousands of toiling men, romping children, 
mothers and maidens, and the world was going on 
below just as usual. How are the birds to be envied 
who make airy mountains by their wings ! Could I 
rise six thousand feet above the ground, that were 
substantially to be on the mountain-top. Then, when 
the multitude wearied us, and the soul would bathe 
in silence, I would with a few beats lift up through 



A TIME AT THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 81 

the air, and seek the solitude of space, and hide in 
the clefts of clouds, or ride unexplored ranges of 
crystal-white cloud-mountains, that scorn footsteps, 
and on whose radiant surfaces an army of feet would 
wear no path, leave no mark, but fade out as do steps 
upon the water ! 

And so, for a half-hour, I rode alone, without the 
rustle of leaves, without hum or buzz, without that 
nameless mixture of pipes, small and great, which 
fill the woods or sing along the surface of the plains. 
There were no nuts to fall, no branches to snap, 
no squirrel to bark, no birds to fly out and flap 
away through the leaves. The matted moss was bora 
and bred in silence. The stunted savins and cedars, 
crouched down close to the earth from savage whids, 
as partridges crouch when hawks are in the air. The 
forests in the chasms and valleys below were like 
bushes or overgrown moss. If there were any wind 
down there, if they shook their leaves to its piping, 
and danced when it bid them, it was all the same to 
me. For motion or rest were alike at this distance. 

There is above every man's head a height into^ 
which he may rise, and whether care and trouble 
fret below, or tear on, they become alike silent and 
powerless. It is only our affections that mount up 
and dwell with us, where bickerings and burdens 
may never come. 

Out of these chambers of the air I remembered the 
world afar off, as one remembers the fairy tales of 
his childhood. The cities we had trodden seem in 
the mind like pencil-traced pictures half rubbed out. 
The real New York seemed too impossible even for 
a dream. That Boston really lay sweltering by the 

4* V 



82 EYES AND EARS. 

sea-side excited a smile of incredulity. As I rode 
along, I tried the effect of speech. I called out aloud. 
The sound fell from my lips, and ceased forever. 
No mountains caught it and nourished it in echoes. 
I called again. But there was in a second no voice, 
and none that echoed. I called a third time with 
better s:iiccess, for one of the gentlemen of the party 
had crept upon my loitering, and, supposing himself 
called, gave me back a very unexpected and most un- 
welcome answer. The bubble burst ! My half-hour, 
like a sweet dream interrupted, fled away, and I could 
not dream it again ! 

Reaching the hotel in due season, tired and sweaty, 
a bath must be had. We went toward the Notch, 
and turning to the right at the first little stream that 
let itself down from the mountains, we sought the 
pools in which we knew such streams kept their 
sweetest thoughts, expressing them by trout. The 
only difficulty was in the selection. This pool was 
deep, rock-rimmed, transparent, gravel-bottomed. The 
next was level-edged and rock-bottomed, but received 
its water with such a gush*, that it whirled around the 
basin in a liquid dance of bubbles. The next one 
received a divided stream, one part coming over a 
shelving rock and sheeting down in white, while the 
other portion fell into a hollow and murmuring 
crevice, and came gurgling forth from a half-dark 
channel. Half-way down, the rock was smooth and 
pleasant to the feet. In the deepest part Were fine 
gravel and powdered mountain, commonly called 
sand. The waters left this pool even more beauti- 
fully than they entered it ; for the rock had been 
rounded and grooved, so that it gave a channel like 



A TIME AT THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 83 

the finest moulded lip of a water-vase ; and the moss, 
beginning below, had crept up into the very throat 
of the passage, and lined it completely, giving to the 
clear water a green hue as it rushed through, whirl- 
ing itself into a plexus of cords, or a kind of pul- 
sating braid of water. This was my pool. It waited 
for me. How deliciously it opened its flood to my 
coming. It rushed up to every pore, and sheeted my 
skin with an aqueous covering, prepared in the moun- 
tain water-looms. Ah ! the coldness : every drop was 
molten hail. It was the very brother of ice. At a 
mere hint of winter it would change to ice again ! 
If the crystal nook were such a surprise of delight to 
me, what must I have been to it, that had perhaps 
never been invaded, imless by the lip of a moose or 
by the lithe and spotted form of sylvan trout ! The 
drops and bubbles ran up to me and broke about 
my neck, and ran laughing away, frolicking over the 
mossy margin, and I could hear them laughing all 
the way down below. Such a monster had never per- 
haps taken covert in the pure, pellucid bowl before ! 

But this was the centre part. Not less memorable 
was the fringe. The trees hung in the air on either 
side, and stretched their green leaves for a roof far 
above. The birch and alder, with here and there 
a silver-fir, in bush form, edged the rocks on either 
side. As you looked up the stream, there opened an 
ascending avenue of cascades, dripping rocks, bearded 
with moss, crevices filled with grass or dwarfed shrubs, 
until the whole was swallowed up in the leaves and 
trees far above. But if you turned down the stream, 
then through a lane of richest green stood the open 
sky, and lifted up against it thousands of feet Mount 



84 EYES AND EARS. 

Willard, rocky and rent, or with but here and there 
a remnant of evergreens, sharp and ragged. The sun 
was behmd it, and poured agahist its farther side his 
whole tide of hght, which lapped over, as a stream 
dashes over its bounds and spills its waters beyond. 
So it stood up over against this ocean of atmospheric 
gold, banked huge and rude, against a most resplen- 
dent heaven ! 

As I stood donning my last articles of raiment, and 
wringing my over-wet hair, I saw a trout move very 
deliberately out from under a rock by which I had 
lain, and walk quietly across to the other side. As 
he entered the crevice, a smaller one left it, and came 
as demurely across to his rock. It was evident that 
the old people had sent them out to see if the coast 
were clear, and whether any damage had been done. 
Probably it was thought that there had been a slide 
in the mountain, and that a huge icicle or lump of 
snow had plunged into their pool, and melted away 
there. If there are piscatory philosophers below water 
half as wise as those above, this would be a very fair 
theory of the disturbance to which their mountain 
homestead had been subjected. As I had eaten of 
their salt, of course I respected the laws of hospi- 
tality, and no deceptive fly of mine shall ever tempt 
trout in a brook which begets pools so lovely, and in 
pools that yield themselves with such delicious em- 
brace to the pleasures of a mountain bath. 

And so, as the sun was gone, it was time for me to 
go. Step by step I climbed the moss-carpeted rocks ; 
slipped in due degree, leaped the wide-set stones, got 
caught on the dead branches of the cedar, climbed 
astride over the birch, and reached the road. 



OUR FIEST EXPERIENCE WITH A SEWmG-MACHINE. 85 



OUK FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH A SEWING- 
MACHINE. 




MONG the things which we did not, but now 
do believe in, is the Sewing-Machine. One 
thing after another had been invented, one 
machine after another had sujDerseded man- 
ual labor, until human hands seemed about to go out 
of use, for anj other mechanical purposes than those 
of lovers' pressures, orators' gestures, and for beaux' 
and belles' gloves. But we always consoled ourselves, 
that one or two things there were yet which no ma- 
chinery could perform. We could imagme children 
put through a whipping-machine, and we had long 
been accustomed to see them taught by automatic 
machines. There was the time-honored business 
handed down to us without a break, from the Gardeu 
of Eden, of courting, — and kissing as one of its or- 
dinances ; — no machinery could ever perform that ! 
Machine-poetry and machine-sermons we were famil- 
iar with. Babbage can make machines for ciphering, 
for computing logarithms, for casting up interest ; but 
can he invent a machine for saving interest, — and 
capital too, for that matter ? And oh ! can there ever 
be a machine for answering letters ? We would pay 
any price for a machine into which letters being put, 
and a crank turned, there should drop out at the other 
side answers as good as the letters, folded, directed, 
and stamped ! 

But machines have steadily gained ground, and the 
iron muscle has relieved the flesh hand ; — machines 



86 EYES AND EARS. 

for boring, sawing, cutting, planing ; for making 
bread (I wish there was one for eating some of it), 
for pumping water, for making cattle draw their own 
drink. But, notwithstanding, we firmly believed that 
some things would never be done by any fingers ex- 
cept human, and eminent among these impossible 
things was Sewing! Nothing we were sure could 
ever perform that, except the latest and best invention 
of Paradise, — woman ! 

When the rumors began to prevail, then, respect- 
ing an invented sewing-machine, we lifted our eye- 
brows gently, and went on our way with a quiet con- 
sciousness that we could not be taken in by any such 
story. We regarded it as of a piece with new-found 
morality in old politicians, with the thousand annual 
rumors of some heaven-dawned virtue in Washington 
City, — a mere device to catch the credulous. 

But day by day the clatter grew. Indeed, we 
surprised ourselves with a coat, sewed in important 
respects by machine. We saw linen pyramids of 
sheeting made for hotels and steamboats by sewing- 
machines. 

The case was growing serious indeed ; and at last 
it came to a head, when the head of the family in- 
formed us that a woman was to come in a few days, 
with her Wheeler and Wilson, and do up the family 
sewing. Of course we submitted without a word. 
And the three capable persons of this household began 
to prepare matter for the machine, to an extent which 
showed how perfectly they had been fooled by the 
story of its executive ability. Piles of large stuff lay 
in each corner ; little stuff covered the table ; and 
miscellaneous stuff lay everywhere. We ran against 



OUR FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH A SEWING-MACHINE. 87 

cotton heaps, were in danger of getting tangled in 
webs of linen and sheeting at every turn ; and such 
ripping and tearing and cutting and basting as went 
on would lead one to imagine that an army was to 
be clothed. 

The day dawned. The woman came, and the iron 
Wheeler and Wilson came with her ; only the lady 
had to act as beau, and offer her aid to wait on 
Messrs. W. and W. After a little, there arose a 
hum from our chamber, not unlike the buzz of a 
wheat-mill, such as we have heard in summer, sitting 
under willow-trees on the edge of a stream, over 
against a red mill, white-dusted. Soon we heard ex- 
cited exclamations. Everybody seemed stirred up. 
The girls left tlieir work, the children forsook their 
playthings, and we followed the example. 

There sat before the simple machine-stand a fair 
young woman, some sixteen years old, whose foot, 
like that of old-fashioned flax-spinners, was working 
the treadle with the nimblest motion. Then came 
the conviction, for the first time, that sewing was con- 
quered and vanquished ! Long sheets, entering the 
fatal pass, streamed through, and came out hemmed, 
in a ridiculously short time. An hour's work was 
done up before your eyes in one minute. A shirt was 
set in of such dimensions, that (we call Baron Mun- 
chausen to witness !) a man could not get round 
it by fair walking in less than — well, in some time ! 
It streamed through the all-puncturing Wheeler and 
Wilson about as soon as a good-sized flag, being 
hoisted, would unroll and flow out to the wind. A 
bundle of linen took its turn, and came forth a collar, 
a handkerchief, a cap. There goes in a piece of cloth ! 



88 EYES AND EARS. 

there comes out a shirt ! We were bewildered. Not 
much was done for some hours in that house but gaze 
and wonder. We mistake ; a good deal more was 
done, and done more effectually than had ever been 
done in ten times the time before ! What heaps of 
towels ; what piles of sheets ; what bedfuls of small 
trumpery ; what bureaus full of fine trash ; what 
carpet-littering stacks of unmentionable matters that 
make up the cloth-inventory of household wealth ! 

The dismayed woman of the house saw her three 
days' prepared work melting away before noon, as a 
three days' April snow disappears in a few hours ! 

The voracious machine began to show its teeth and 
to demand more food ; and now it was a fair race, 
whether two women could prepare as much as one 
machine could perform ! It did our very souls good. 
At last we hoped tliat this was working fast enough. 
0, what early hours has our lamp been made to illu- 
mine ! Ah, what breakfasts have we eaten, and 
seen cleared away, long before the sun touched even 
the cheek of day. Wliat impetuous industry has 
glowed about the house, — forenoon, afternoon, night, 
midnight, never enough, never overmatched ! We 
grew tired even to look at it ! At last, said we, 
You 've got your match. Now, then, we will sit 
down and see this race with a satisfaction that shall 
include years of revenge for disturbed indolence ! 

For a long time the match was doubtful. Some- 
times it was the machine that had the advantage, and 
sometimes it was not. The contest was passing into 
the middle of the afternoon. It was doubtful. Some- 
times the fast-driven needle evidently gained ; then 
again, in roundiiig up a sleeve-gathering, the needle 



HUNTING FLIES. 89 

flagged, and then the hand-worked scissors gained ! 
But iron and steel are more enduring even than a 
housewife's courage. And though, for any single 
hour, the hand could prepare faster than the machine 
could execute, yet, taking the day through, Wheeler 
and Wilson had the advantage, and came out at dark 
decidedly ahead. That settled it. There was a revo- 
lution in this household. Our Miriam sounded her 
timbrel, and triumphed over the cruel Pharaoh of the 
needle, whose dynasty and despotism were ended ! 

Now sewing is the family amusement. Our Wheeler 
and Wilson is played on a great deal more than our 
Steinway piano, — and is the cause, too, of more real 
music than is ever got out of that instrument ; for two 
canary birds, perched on either side of the book-case, 
understand the first click of the sewing-machine to 
be a challenge, and while the machine sings staccato, 
they warble ad libitum, — and between the solfeggio 
of the one and the cantabile of the other we go crazy. 



HUNTING FLIES. 

1855. 



cas*'' 



HERE are two degrees in this art, viz. F. H. 
and F. C, — Fly Hunting and Fly Catch- 
ing. The first is easy, but few can have a 
diploma for the last. We opened the door 
to let the warmth out of our over-heated study, and in 
came a boisterous fly, almost as big as a bee, and ten 
times as important. One wovild think him a courier 
before all the emperors on earth, or the chief of poli- 



90 EYES AND EARS. 

ticians about to utter a speech, or a Monsieur Jullien, 
lecturing his hundred instruments, each in his own 
tongue. 

It was an annoyance ; for when one has a little bit 
of an inspiration of his own, and is about to make a 
flourish on paper, he does not care to have himself 
burlesqued. Did you ever undertake to drive one 
fly out of a large room, with a high ceiling ? We 
took our broom and struck at the busy fellow, with 
only the effect of immensely quickening his activity. 
Whereas, before, he buzzed in stately circuits, he now 
set about such a series of nimble whirls, now near the 
floor, then, before we could detect him with our eye, 
up by the ceiling ; now by the door, then by the win- 
dow, and giving out a sound like a wheel in a factory, 
until our anger changed to mirth, and the attempt at 
hitting him became ludicrous. We smote here and 
there ; we beat the books, the wall, the carpet, the 
stove, — everything but the fly. He seemed to be 
the only one that fully enjoyed himself. At length 
we sat down, hoping the busy impertinence would 
settle somewhere. So he did, — right before our face, 
on the desk, and crept about with such a nimble, pert, 
business-like air, that one could not help thinking 
that he said, " Were you not looking for us, sir, just 
now ? Is there anything that you particularly want ? 
Can't we serve you?" — and with that, undoubtedly 
unable to restrain the laughter that swelled his blue 
jacket, he flew up and whirred and whirled, bounced 
and buzzed ; bumped the window, and bizzed against 
the wall, and went through all the waltzes, polkas, 
schottishes, that ever were conceived of, — a perfect 
aerial quadrille. 



BACK AGAIN. 91 

Well, this is amusing enough on a small scale ; 
but it is rather sad to see it on a large scale. New 
York has been after its corrupt and corrupting alder- 
men for months past, swinging the broom of justice 
after them ; smiting here and smiting there, but 
always hitting the place that the rogues had just left. 
And nobody is so happy, so fat, so nimble, so amiable 
and familiar with justice, as these amazing aldermen. 

Methinks we see our example imitated, also, in 
the grandest style, by no less a broom-holder than 
the President of these United States. He shakes his 
broom, now at Disunionists, now at Free-Soilers, and 
then at all who hate both of them. Indeed, his task 
is worse than ours ; for he has flies to drive out, and 
flies to drive in, and a part of the time it is very un- 
certain which is which. Lately several big flies have 
been buzzing in the custom-house, so that the Presi- 
dent could get no peace even in Washington. Ani? 
less ever since he has been flirting the broom than 
before. 

BACK AGAIN. 




E are always glad to get out of the city in 
summer, and always glad to get back again 
when the vacation is up. Ten months of 
city labor prepare one for the luxury of rest, 
or, what is better, light occupation and country scenes. 
A man in the country may, and often does, worl^ in- 
cessantly, and up to the measure of his strength ; and 
a city clergyman can do no more than that. Yet the 



92 EYES AND EAES. 

labor of a city pastor is more exacting and more ex- 
haustive of nervous vitality. Unless he shut himself 
up, and bar and bolt his seclusion, he knows nothing 
either of leisure or rest, in the sense of quietness 
and being let alone. The very roar of the street 
is an imperceptible excitement. To walk through the 
thoroughfares, to see the rush and whirl and anxious 
haste of so many men, imparts something of anxious 
haste or feverishness to your mind. Then there is an 
endless succession of things to be done, that require 
time for the doing, but leave you nothing to show 
at the end of the week. There are committees and 
consultations, there are private meetings and public 
meetings, there are new movements to be initiated, 
and old ones to be kept up. Everybody has every- 
thing to do, and clergymen are the ones expected to 
advise everybody about everything that does not come 
within limitation of business partnerships. The sick 
have a right to the minister. If they be strangers 
and poor, a yet better right. The poor have a right 
to expect that he, at least, will have concern for 
them. The afflicted look to him. Those who are in 
comfort, whose friends are good counsellors, do not 
know how many thousands there are in the city that 
have no oire to go to. A widow wishes to put her 
boy to a good trade ; who shall advise her ? Who 
shall ascertain for her if the place thought of be safe 
and the man honorable? A young man is run down 
and discouraged ; lacks a place and means of liveli- 
hood. Where, among strangers, can he find help, if 
ministers do ilot give it to him ? Parents are troubled 
about their children, just passing through the crisis 
of life ; they are not boys any longer, nor are they 



BACK AGAIN. 93 

men. It is a help and a comfort, if they have not 
better advisers, to go to their minister. 

One sort of men think of clergymen simply as 
the preachers of sermons. They think their life and 
labor is deep and subtle, — study through the week, 
and utterance on Sunday. Others think of clergymen 
simply in their relations to public enterprises. They 
ought to lead here, and lead there. They ought to 
appear in this meeting, and in that. If a man do 
not preach ably, he is good for nothing, some think. 
If he be not a reformer, a thorough progressive, then 
others think he is worse than useless. Now we surely 
wish every minister were a good and able preacher ; 
and we wish it were the conscience-necessity of every 
minister to lead his people, and, as far as his influ- 
ence allowed, the community, in all well-considered 
advance movements. But these are not all his func- 
tions. These are the public aspects. His private 
work, his ten thousand services to individuals, to the 
unfriended, the tempted, the poor, the afflicted, the 
perplexed ; the giving of counsel to the weak, encour- 
agement to the desponding; the taking care of men 
one by one and in detail, as well as generic and 
wholesome movements for communities and mankind, 
constitute an immense proportion of his labor. It is 
that part which takes the most out of him in time, 
strength, and nerves. It is that which he feels more 
than study or speaking. It is that of which his peo- 
ple have the least conception. They naturally judge 
by what they see, and they see that which is in the 
pulpit and on the platform, 

It is six o'clock in the morning. The day is begun. 
The family are emerging. Breakfast will' be ready in 



94 EYES AND EARS. 

half an hour. You look for the Tribune. The bell 
rings. A man has called thus early, for fear you 
might be out. You despatch his business. Sitting 
down to breakfast, the bell rings, and the servant says 
the man will wait. But what pleasure can one have 
at a meal with a man up-stairs waiting for him, and 
the consciousness of it hastening the coffee and the 
toast on their way ? You run up. Can you marry a 
couple at so and so ? That is settled. Prayers are 
had with the family. The bell rings, once, twice, ' 
three times. When you rise, there are five persons 
waiting for you in the front parlor. A young man 
from the country wishes your name on his circular 
for a school. A young woman is failing in health by 
-confinement to sewing ; does not know what to do ; 
behind in rent ; cannot get away to the country ; 
does not wish charity; only wishes some one to enable 
her to break away from a state of things that will in 
six months kill her. Another called to inquire after 
a friend of whom he has lost sight. While you are 
attending to these, the bell is active, and other per- 
sons take the places of those that go. A poor mother 
wants to buy her son's wife out of slavery. A kind 
woman calls in behalf of a boarder who is out of 
place, desponding, will throw himself away if he can- 
not get some means of livelihood. Another calls to 
know if I will not visit a poor family in great distress, 

in Street. A good and honest looking man / 

comes next ; is out of work ; has " heard that ' your 
riverince ' is a kind man," etc. Another man wants 
to get his family out from Ireland, can pay half^ if 
some one will intercede «with ship-owners to trust him 
the balance. A stranger has died, and a sexton de- 



BACK AGAIN. 95 

sires a clergyman's services. Several persons desire 
religious conversation. It is after ten o'clock. A 
moment's lull. You catch your hat and run out. 
Perhaps you have forgotten some appointment. You 
betake yourself to your study, not a little flurried 
by the contrariety of things which you have been 
considering. You return to dine. There are five 
or six persons waiting for you. At tea you find 
others, also, with their divers necessities. 

This is not overdrawn ; and for months of the year 
it is far underdrawn. There is no taxation compar- 
able to an incessant various conversation with people 
for whom you must think, devise, and for whose help 
you feel yourself often utterly incompetent. 

Yet it is right that people should have some one to 
go to. It is right that Christian ministers should be 
the persons. It is religion in its form of benevolence 
thus to stand on the side of weakness, want, igno- 
rance, repentant wickedness, — for their relief. 

But when ten months of incessant attrition have 
exhausted one's nervous store, the bell becomes an 
affliction ; we dread its sound. We long for calm- 
ness, for solitude, for rest. We seek the coolest, most 
secluded spots. There must be many attractions of 
scenery ; but, before all other things, there must not 
be many people there. 

Six weeks of rest change all that. The feverish 
impatience is gone. Your old love of work comes 
back. You return to your post with secret joy. You 
are eager for work. The old bell is musical. You 
begin again to listen, to urge or dissuade, to counsel 
or to direct, those who come. You find the foun- 
tains of speech flowing once more. The face of the 



96 EYES AND EAES. 

gi'cat congregation is inspiring to you. And, after 
your vacation, you are worth a great deal more to 
them than if you had plodded on without cessation 
or relaxation. 




A WESTERN TRIP. 

October, 1855. 

HEN we first visited the West, in 1834, there 
was but one single strip of railroad in the 
whole country west of the Hudson, and 
^ that was between Albany and Schenectady. 
We thought ourselves fortunate in reaching Cincin- 
nati in ten days from New York. But now we leave 
New York at 6.30 (to use the new railroad idiom) 
on Monday, and expect to take supper in Chicago on 
Tuesday evening. The only difference between ex- 
pectation and realization was, that we arrived on 
Wednesday forenoon, being out two nights instead 
of one. We missed the connection at Toledo, and 
so our delay arose. 

The cars on the Erie road were crowded more than 
we ever before saw them, giving sign that people are 
recovering from their absurd prejudices against this 
most comfortable of all roads. But though every 
place be filled, the cars cannot, after all, be said to 
be crowded^ so spacious are the wide seats. 

We went through the usual experience of travel- 
lers. We talked till our throats ached, for we were 
fortunate in having Dr. Bellows, of New York, as a 
companion. We thumbed the guide-book, and reck- 



A WESTERN TRIP. 9T 

oiied how far we had come, and how far it yet was 
to Dunkirk. We got out at wood and water stations, 
and saluted the engine, and bought apples of the 
boys, and ran down banks for asters, golden-rod, and 
purple beech-leaves, and scampered back again fast 
as feet could carry us, when the whistle began, like 
a fretting old woman, to scold and scream that they 
would leave us if we did not come back instantly. 
But we were always too nimble for the engine, whose 
speed is not in its start where ours is. At eleven, 
o'clock at night Dunkirk was reached. We had the 
huge, dreary, chilly depot as a waiting-place till the 
Buffalo cars came in. They were late. They were 
yet later when we started for Cleveland, and more 
than two hours behind time when we reached that 
city in the morning, after a night's sleep in the cars ; 
which made you think that you were a kaleidoscope, 
and at every jolt and turn new and ridiculous com- 
binations were taking place in the fragments of your 
internal being, and one looks back on the contents 
of such a night as upon a wild hallucination. But 
if the night was disturbed, what was the screaming 
tumult of the morning at the Cleveland depot ? Bells 
ringing, gongs roaring, porters shouting, passengers 
being disgorged by hundreds, with wrinkled-up chil- 
dren, squeezed and uncombed and unwashed. The 
Cincinnati train, the Toledo train, and other trains 
had been patiently waiting for our tardy arrival ; and 
the locomotives were roaring off their extra steam, 
and whistling for very nervousness, and prancing 
about, running in and out, just to keep themselves 
from blowing up with mere ill-humor and impatience. 
Meanwhile, the hand-trucks were changing baggage, 

5 G 



98 EYES AND EARS. 

and rattling, with huge piles of luggage, all over the 
depot. 

Is there anything on earth so much to be pitied as 
a trunk ? What awful violence it suffers in packing ; 
what crowding and straining, to get in twice as much 
as it can possibly hold. Then comes the shutting, 
the getting on the lid, the jumping and jamming, the 
red-faced vexation because the latch will not quite 
catch, the final triumph, the twirl of the key, the 
strapping and cover-fastening. How trying to weak 
human nature is a strap and buckle ! You pull till 
the blood threatens to burst from your head, and al- 
most bring the hole up to the buckle-tongue. You 
give it a quick jerk to let it in, but it only springs 
back. You try again, and lose it again, and your 
patience with it. You jerk, and protest, and will 
have it come right. At length you propose a com- 
promise, and cut another hole in the strap half-way ; 
and deceive yourself with thinking that you have had 
your own way. This may end your troubles, but it is 
but the beginning of the trunk's. The hackman drops 
it ; the porter slings it aboard. The baggage-master 
fires it into the heap as if he meant to make it strike 
fire. At night it is to be changed at Dunkirk, say. 
They are pitched out of the car like bombs. Two or 
three employees seem possessed with very spite at 
them. They catch them by the handle, give them a 
prodigious twirl on one end, and the trunk spins like 
a top to a corner of the baggage-space, an^i smashes 
up against its fellows. Again at Cleveland, they are 
sent out like shot from the cars, piled up on the 
trucks, little ones at the bottom, and big ones at the 
top, some are smashed, some are dented, some are 



A Wi:STERN TRIP. 99 

ripped, but all go headlong and heterogeneously into 
the new limbo of baggage. It is very interesting, 
then, to examine some of these trunks, which a kind 
aunt has labelled, " Please lift it by the handles " ; or, 
" Keep this side up." One might as well put a label 
on a Paixhan shot, giving directions for its careful 
journey. Well, our ^'Crouch and Fitzgerald^^ trunk 
seemed peculiarly lucky. It had the knack of escaping 
contusion and abuse, and when we reached Chicago, 
came forth from its canvas, shining like a new one. 
But we look on it as a miracle. Nothing would have 
persuaded us that such an escape was possible. A 
mathematical calculation of chances would make the 
course of a trunk from New York to Chicago to be 
like the chances of grain through the mill-stones. 
And a man might well expect to receive, at the end 
of his journey, only a bag of dust mixed up with 
fragments of leather and raiment. 

But we are thankful for a safe reaching of this 
extraordinary city of Chicago. No man has seen the 
West who has not seen Chicago. Nature has done 
little for its harbor, and government has done less. 
The ground was not meant for a city. The place has 
no adaptations for a fine city. It is low, flat, muddy, 
or dusty. But such is the concentration of enormous 
business here, that before many years all natural dif- 
ficulties will have been overcome. The grade will be 
raised artficially ; the streets paved ; the sidewalks, 
now of wood, converted to stone ; the river tunnelled ; 
the harbor cleaned out and enlarged, and the whole 
river, in both its branches, be wharfed in and lined 
with lumber-yards and warehouses. But as yet Chi- 
cago is anything but a city of desirable aspect to the 



100 EYES AND EARS. 

eye or the feet. It would seem to be a merchant's 
beau ideal of paradise. It fairly smokes and roars with 
business. There is no room for the caravans of 
teams. The river is choked with craft, and the harbor 
is filled with vessels. The streets are filled up with 
boxes and bales, the stores are like hives in spring 
weather, with swarms going in and out with incessant 
activity; — buying and selling, buying and selling, 
buying and selling, — that is Chicago. The merchant 
cannot get goods from the East fast enough. His yes- 
terday's arrivals are gone to-day, or picked over and 
made thin. The warehouses cannot hold the grain ; 
the shipping cannot convey it away fast enough ; 
and demand, on every side, drives up the business -men 
with incessant importunity. Huge hotels, that seem 
large enough to accommodate an army, were running 
over ; and having occasion to stop a moment at the 
Briggs House, we found the hall leading to the dining- 
room packed with scores of men, though yet fifteen 
minutes to dinner, waiting for the opening of the door. 
But it was the Agricultural Fair that had, without 
doubt, made such a terrific crush in town, during the 
few days that we tarried there. 

We visited the grounds of the Fair, and made a 
rapid inspection of stock, products, machinery, fab- 
rics, and men, women, and children. The occasion 
was very creditable to the managers. While examin- 
ing the ploughs, some farmers, supposing that we were 
the exhibitors, asked us to explain the operation of 
one. Fortunately, it was the double Michigan plough, 
and we knew its peculiarities. Accordingly, we fell 
into our blandest manner: "Gentlemen, this is an 
admirable plough ! We will suppose that a furrow has 



A WESTERN TRIP. 101 

been opened all around the field or land. When this 
plough sets in, the first share, which you see here, takes 
some fi)ur to six inches of the surface, and inverts it 
into the furrow. The second share raises some ten to 
twelve inches more of the subsoil, and throws it upon 
the surface soil, so that the soil is exactly reversed ; 
the top soil is turned from fifteen to twenty inches, 
and the subsoil is brought to the top. This will not 
do on gravelly and shallow soils. But when you 
have a good subsoil, that only needs air and mellow- 
ing, these ploughs are admirable." Having got safe- 
ly through that speech, the farmers were disposed 
to enlarge our sphere, and asked an explanation of 
several other inventions and machines that were quite 
beyond our reach, so that we found it convenient to 
slip off, and leave the place, while our reputation 
remained good. 

Much stock changed hands on the ground, and at 
large prices. Our only purchases were of two potatoes 
of a South American kind, and a bushel of Mexican 
ditto. Likewise we procured two kinds of corn. 
"With these our zeal closed. 

* 



102 EYES AND EARS. 



THE LECTURE SYSTEM. 

1855. 

HOSE disconsolate persons who live in dread 




of every breeze that brings a ripple to the 
surface of a community, and who have been 
especially afraid of this system of popular 
lectures which has so suddenly grown up and into 
such strength, have fresh occasion for alarm. The 
demand for lectures was never so strong and earnest 
as now. Feeding does not satisfy it. The number 
of able lecturers every year increases. The arrange- 
ments for lectures have assumed something of the 
stability of institutions. The places where lectures 
have prevailed longest are the very ones where the 
interest is deepest. It must be given up, then, as a 
thing past recall, and lectures will henceforth be 
ranked as a part of our necessities. Is there no 
consolation for these sad-eyed and disconsolate per- 
sons? We think there is, and much. 

Every lecturer has an opportunity of hearing an 
expression of opinion respecting those who have pre- 
ceded him, and I have been struck with the general 
truth of the judgments formed, and the evidences 
afforded of good sense and critical sagacity among the 
common people. Men find their level in this walk of 
life as much as in the professions. The people are 
reasonably content with plain sense ; they are better 
pleased with sound sense dressed with learning or 
ample experience. If to this is added wit and fancy, 
they repay all that with proper appreciation. And 
if the whole be inspired with a deep moral impulse, 



THE LECTURE SYSTEM. 103 

and breathe the breath of a noble heart, every one 
recognizes that too. 

It will probably be the testimony of all who lec- 
ture, that every year audiences grow more difficult. 
In other words, every winter's course educates their 
critical judgment and their taste. They require abler 
performances. They can less easily be imposed upon 
by brilliant trick or learned dulness. And we were 
never so sure as now, that the most popular lecturers 
are those who deserve to be so. That success does 
not depend upon superficial glitter, but upon in- 
trinsic merit. Of this we shall speak again in a 
moment. 

One should remember that a lecture is but just 
begun when the lecturer has finished its delivery. The 
audience have laughed and clapped, glowed or wept, 
admired or yawned, as the case may be, and social 
sympathy has carried them along pretty much to- 
gether. Now they disperse. They begin to talk on 
the way home. The father and mother draw the chil- 
dren out, to know how much they heard, and what 
impression was produced on them ; they discuss it, 
and the family for several days is a debating-society. 
Young men in an office, clerks in a store, mechanics 
in the shop, boys in the academy, all overhaul the 
lecture, and for a week it becomes a theme of reflec- 
tion, discussion, and active criticism. In this way 
one lecture controls another. If a lecture is but 
interesting in the delivery, and full of meat after- 
wards for a whole week's picking, it sits in judgment 
on another lecture, brilliant in delivery, but leaving 
no permanent impressions, no questions, no facts, no 
reasonings, for after-discussions. It does not take a 



104 EYES AND EARS. 

community long to perceive that some lectures in- 
struct them wearisomely, that some instruct and in- 
spire, that some inspire but do not instruct, that 
some, like fire-works, are magnificent while going off 
and nothing afterwards, and others, like a pomological 
show, are fine in the exhibition, and very juicy and 
refreshing afterwards. What else is there in our 
towns and villages throughout the land that produces 
such a degree of pleasure and such universal mental 
excitement ? Is it better to have young people at balls 
and dances, or at convivial gatherings and bar-rooms ? 

It is often said that popular lectures produce super- 
ficial habits, and that, instead of reading and reflec- 
tion, young people become fascinated with easy and 
brilliant knowledge, to the detriment of sober and 
reflective information. This may be true in single 
cases ; but in regard to the greatest number who 
attend lectures, the choice is not between knowledge 
judiciously gathered by their own industry and 
knowledge superficially got from a lecture. In re- 
spect to the greatest number, it is true, that, if they 
do not get it from the lecture, they will not have it at 
all. And the real question is, whether it is better for 
the young to grow up without general knowledge, or 
to obtain a relish for it from lecturers. 

Not long since we read a captious paragraph in a 
paper, stating that Professor So-and-so, of such a col- 
lege, had gone to such a village, and but a handful 
came to hear him ; whereas the next week, Mr. Bar- 
num lectured there, and the house could not contain 
the crowds, — and the application made was, that 
even New England audiences ran after chaff, and did 
not care for wheat. 



THE LECTURE SYSTEM. 105 

But is this a fair statement? Did tlie writer take 
pains to ascertain what opinion was formed of Mr. 
Barnum's lecture ; whether people afterwards were 
as much pleased, as before they were curious ? Would 
they go again in such numbers ? And, on the other 
side, did Professor So-and-so have any previous repu- 
tation in that village which should draw people to 
hear him ? Perhaps they had heard him before, and 
therefore stayed away. We have heard college pro- 
fessors that were stupid, even to genius in that direc- 
tion. There are professors in colleges with gifts at 
instructing classes, who have no gifts at instructing 
promiscuous audiences. It is one thing to lead a 
class along, day by day, opening in successive parts a 
large subject, and another to project a subject, group 
it into life form, and set it forth in an hour's time, so 
that common minds can grasp it, and be entertained 
withal. But if our disappointed professor was all 
that it is necessary for a lecturer to be, and the people 
did not come to hear him, he is in the condition of 
every young man before the public find him out, — a 
probationer. Let him go again, and a third time, and 
if then those who came at first do not return, and few 
others supply their place, instead of charging the town 
with stupidity, might he not better undergo a process 
of self-examination ? Sometimes the people are smart, 
and the lecturer stupid. We are speaking, of course, 
in the general ; for we know neither the person named 
by his injudicious friend in the paragraph alluded to 
nor the circumstances of the town. And, for aught 
that we know, next year Professor So-and-so, a little 
roused up, will prepare a Hving lecture, written for 
people that are not students, and will deliver it with 

5* 



106 EYES AND EARS. 

such genial animation, that everybody will say that it 
was the lecture^ of the season, and then the intel- 
ligence and appreciativeness of the popular mind will 
go up above par. 

Town-Halls. — One of the fruits of the lecture sys- 
tem is seen in the multiplication of admirable town- 
halls. Every town ought to have a good hall of its own 
for popular assemblies and for town-meetings. But 
such reasons would wait long before people would con- 
sent to be taxed for an expensive building. But once 
let the lecture spirit arise, and people be for a few 
seasons crowded into a court-room, or into a church, 
which is soon shut against them, (because men of 
doubtful orthodoxy are invited to lecture, or because 
the audience laughed and clapped the speaker, or for 
a far better and more justifiable reason, — because 
men, calling themselves gentlemen, besmeared the 
carpets and pews with filthy tobacco-spit,) and the 
enterprise of a town-halLgains favor, and one or two 
years sees it built, and the whole town proud of their 
public spirit. These remarks are suggested by the 
new building just erected in Hudson, N. Y., where 
we are now writing. Three years ago we lectured in 
the court-house ; last winter, in a church ; but last 
night, in an ample and admirable town-hall, which is 
very creditable to this place. 

Ought not such places as New Haven, Bridgeport, 
Hartford, Springfield, Poughkeepsie, to have public 
halls bearing some relation to the taste and public 
spirit of the citizens ? 

Yentilation. — If they c?o, will they not procure 
one thing, — a supply of air. It is astonishing that 
God should have set such an example before us, and 



THE LECTUEE SYSTEM. 107 

provided such wondrous abundance of air, and men. 
take no hint from it of the prime necessity of this 
substance for health, brightness, and enjoyment. Al- 
most without a single exception, new halls and old 
ones are unventilated. The committee will point you 
to an auger-hole in some corner of the ceiling, and tell 
you that arrangements have been made for ventila- 
tion ! You might as well insert a goose-quill in a 
dam to supply all Lowell with water for its mills ! 
These contemptible little holes, hardly big enough for 
a fat rat to run in without disarranging his sleek fur, 
are hardly enough for one breather, and they are set 
to do the work of a thousand people ! Besides, no 
provision is made for the introduction of fresh air 
from below, to supply the place of that which is sup- 
posed to pass off. The air-trunk of furnaces ought to 
be double the usual size, and the hot-air trunks that 
lead from the furnace-chamber to the room should be 
four times as large as is usual, so that large volumes 
of mild air can come in, instead of fierce currents of 
intensely hot air, out of which the moisture has been 
dried, and the oxygen burnt, by contact with a red- 
hot furnace. A room that will seat a thousand per- 
sons should have not, less than four ventiducts, each 
one of them larger than a man's whole body. They 
can be placed at the four corners of the building ; or 
they may be arranged along the sides of the wall, the 
number being increased as the diameter of each is 
diminished. But the square inches of the mouths of 
the ventiducts should be at least one third greater than 
of the mouths of the heat-trunks which come from the 
furnace. 

As soon as a speaker begins, he usually finds his 



108 EYES AND EAES. 

cheek flushed, his head full and throbbing. Bad air 
is at work with him. The blood that is going to his 
brain has not been purified in his lungs by contact 
with good air. It has a diminished stimulating power. 
It is the first stage of suffocation ; for all that is done, 
when a man is hung, is to prevent the passage of air 
down his windpipe ; and if you corrupt the air till it 
ceases to perform a vital function, it is the same thing 
in effect ; so that a public speaker, in a tainted atmos- 
phere, is going through a prolonged process of at- 
mospheric hanging. 

The people, too, instantly show signs of distress. 
Women begin to fan themselves ; children grow 
sleepy ; and well-fed men grow red and somnolent. 
How people can consent to breathe each others' breath 
over and over and over again, we never could im- 
agine. They would never return to a hotel where 
they were put into a bed between sheets that had been 
used by travellers before them, — no, they must have 
fresh sheets. They would go without food rather 
than eat off a plate used by several parties before 
them. Clean, fresh plates are indispensable. But, 
while so delicate of their outside skin and their 
mouth, they will take air into their lungs that has 
been breathed over twenty times, by all sorts of per- 
sons, and that fairly reeks with feculence ; and nothing 
disgusts them but a proposal to open a window, and 
let in clean and fresh air. That brings up coat- 
collars, and brings down scowls, and amiable lips 
pout, and kind tongues declare that they will not go 
to such a place again, if they do not have these mat- 
ters regulated better for the health ! 



HOME REVISITED. 109 



HOME REVISITED. 




jEAYING Chicago a second time, we rode all 
night toward Indianapolis, Ind. It was 
strange to make in a single night, with ease, 
a journey which used to require four hard 
days' riding in the best season of the year ! Leaving 
Michigan City at about eleven at niglit, we reached 
our former home at seven in the morning. There 
can be no place so memorable to our after years as 
that in which we began life, and received our first 
development. This is true, whatever a man's calling 
may be ; but there is that in a pastor's office which 
gives peculiar interest to all his first efforts. 

There stands yet that academy, in the second story 
of which we first preached on settling in Indianapolis. 
It would hold scarcely more than one hundred. The 
, first sermon there is as vivid a picture to-day as it was 
at the time. The persons present, the transient ex- 
pressions which the faces wore during the exercises, 
their dress, and the little incidents, — as where an 
old man put his cane, the knocking over a pile of 
hats, the crying of a child, — we see them all now in 
memory, more distinctly than we were conscious of 
seeing them at the time. In this room we preached 
the first real sermon that we ever uttered. We had 
delivered hundreds before, but till then, the sermon 
was the end and not the means. We had a vague 
idea that truth was to be preached, and that then it 
wa:s to be left to do its work under God's blessing as 
best it might. . The results were not satisfying. Why 
should not preaching do now what it did in the Apos- 



110 EYES AND EARS. 

ties' days ? Why should it be a random and unre- 
quited effort ? These thoughts grew, and the want 
of fruits was so painful, that we determined to make 
a careful examination of the Apostles' preaching, to 
see what it was that made it so immediately efficient. 
We found that they laid a foundation first of histori- 
cal truth, common to them and their auditors ; that 
this mass of familiar truth was then concentrated upon 
the hearers in the form of an intense personal appli- 
cation and appeal ; that the language was not philo- 
sophical and scholastic, but the language of common 
life. We determined to try the same. We consid- 
ered what moral truths were admitted by everybody, 
and gathered many of them together. We considered 
how they could be so combined as to press men to- 
ward a religious state. We recalled to mind the char- 
acter and condition of many who we knew would be 
present, and then, after as earnest a prayer as we ever 
offered, and with trembling solicitude, we went to the 
academy and preached the new sermon. The Lord 
gave it power, and ten or twelve persons were aroused 
by it, and led ultimately to a religious life. 

This was the most memorable dSy of our ministerial 
life. The idea was born. Preaclnng was a definite 
and practical thing. Our people needed certain moral 
changes. Preaching was only a method of enforcing 
truths, not for the sake of the truths themselves, but 
for the results to be sought in men. Man was the 
thing. Henceforth our business was to work upon 
man; to study him, to stimulate and educate him. 
A sermon was good that had power on the heart, and 
was good for nothing, no matter how good, that had 
no moral power on man. Others had learned this. 



HOME REVISITED. Ill 

It was the secret of success in every man who ever 
was eminent for usefuhiess in preaching. But no 
man can inherit experience. It must be born in each 
man for himself. After the light dawned, I could 
then see how plainly Jonathan Edwards's sermons were 
so made. Those gigantic applications of his were only 
the stretching out of the arms of the sermon upon 
the hearts and lives of his audience. I could see it 
now, and wondered that I had not seen it before. 
But having caught the idea, I went eagerly through 
Edwards to see how he took aim. I found his ser- 
mons to be either a statement and establishment of a 
plain principle, or an exceedingly abundant collection 
of Scriptural teachings around some great central 
truth. This was not, however, the sermon ; it was 
only a battery thrown up. The guns were in place. 
The cannonading was yet to come on. Then from 
these bulwarks and batteries came a fire upon the 
life, the hearts, the character, the conduct, of liv- 
ing men, just as they lived in Edwards's days, such 
I think as no uninspired man ever surpassed, if any 
ever equalled it. It was a kind of moral inquisition, 
and sinners were put upon argumentative racks, and 
beneath screws, and, with an awful revolution of the 
great truth in hand, evenly and steadily screwed down 
and crushed. I never could read that sermon, " Sin- 
ners in the hands of an angry God^^ at one sitting. 
I think a person of moral sensibility alone at mid- 
night, reading that awful discourse, would wellnigh 
go crazy. He would hear the judgment-trump, and 
see the advancing heaven, and the day of doom would 
begin to mantle him with its shroud. 

But we have wandered, — not exactly wandered 



112 EYES AND EARS. 

either, — for the Book of the Ads of the Apostles 
and Edwards's Sermons were the two masters at 
whose feet we sat while learning that preaching is 
only another name for taking hold of men and 
moulding them. This was sixteen years ago. What 
a crowded memory rose up through all that period ! 
Children are men, men are turned to spirits. Al- 
most every house I met sprung out to me with a 
memory. In that one, I remember an only daugh- 
ter's funeral, her mother a widow. The first chil- 
dren baptized in the Academy room were twins ; one 
is grown nearly to manliood on earth, the other 
quite, but in heaven. The mother that was broken- 
hearted has gone thither after her children. The 
eldest daugliter has mounted thitherward, rejoicing 
too. 

There was the church building, almost every nail 
of which we saw driven. We did not see simply the 
church made with hands, but the church of souls. 
In the semi-subterranean lecture-room what glorious 
scenes were enacted ! We went thither and sat 
down in the old place, and called back the former 
times ; we saw the faces again ; we labored again, 
and prayed again, and wept again. For the trance 
was complete, and we lived in the ten years ago. It 
did not seem that we had been away. It seemed the 
most natural thhig in the world to begin just where 
we left off, — to take up the thread and stitch just 
where we laid them down. 

In the church on Sabbath morning how strangely 
were the real and the unreal blended ! Each face 
that we saw flashed upon us the whole history of 
the man. This one was converted in such a year. 



HOME EEVISITED. 113. 

We remembered the first time he spoke to us, wliere 
we were, just wliat lie said, our own silent thought, 
the whole progress and issue of the case. Mothers 
were there with their little children, whom we had 
carried as little girls. But many were not there. 
Some made shipwreck ; some by faith have inherited 
the promises. ^ 

On Monday we walked the streets, searching out 
the old places. The ten-acre pasture near our little 
dwelling is now a nest of houses checkered with 
streets. The places wiiere we searched for quails 
will never see wild game abound again. Poage's 
E-un is now cut and shaped, and walled in and 
bridged, until its old acquaintances do not know it, 
even if it knows itself. There was not a ti^ee that 
had not its story to tell. Every street had a claim 
upon memory. The former houses were written over 
within and without, like record-books. The kind 
citizens, rejoicing in the growth and prosperity of 
their city, naturally wished that I should see the 
new things. I turned away. It was the old things 
that I cared for. There was no tongue in the new. 
But the old spoke, and told me, if not " all that ever 
I did," yet a good deal of it. As I left the place, in 
my very soul I felt what the jPsalmist meant when 
he said, "Peace be withhi thy walls, and prosperity 
within thy palaces. For my brethren and compan- 
ions' sakes, I will now say. Peace be within thee." 

By the favor of influential friends, I was allowed 
the privileges of the road when I took the cars for 
Lawrenceburg and Cincinnati. I therefore deter- 
mined to go upon the locomotive, the better to see 
the ground over which, or rather through wliich, in 



114 EYES AND EARS. 

earlier years I had waded wearily on horseback. No 
man knows anything of mud until he has lived in 
the West. Three days to Cincinnati, in my day, 
was good travelling. Now about four hours is re- 
quired ! 

Mounted on the engine, I rode in triumph over the 
swamps, across the corduroy roads, along the black, 
deep river-bottoms that used to have such terrors. I 
gloried over them. I could not help fancying that 
there was a subdued look to the roads and rails, as if 
they felt that they were conquered and humbled. 

Thus ended the pleasant part of our Western trip. 



HOW TO WAKE IN THE MORNING. 




ETTING up early is venerable. Since there 
has been a literature or a history, the habit 
of early rising has been recommended for 
health, for pleasure, and for business. Tlie 
ancients are held up to us for examples. But they 
lived so far to the east, and so near the sun, that it 
was much easier for them than for iis. People in 
Europe always get np several hours before we do ; 
people in Asia several hours before the Europeans do ; 
and we suppose as men go toward the sun it gets 
easier and easier, until somewhere in the Orient 
probably they step out of bed involuntarily, or, like 
a flower blossoming, they find their bed-clothes gently 
opening and turning back, by the mere attraction of 
light. 



HOW TO WAKE IN THE MORNING. 115 

But as far toward sundown as we are, the matter 
becomes more difficult. Expedients of every kind 
are resorted to. Some men have heads with the 
organ of Time so largely developed, that they have 
only to select the hour, fix attention upofi it, and 
then, as it were, wind up their minds, and sure enough 
off they go at the appointed time. We have tried 
this with success ourselves. But it induces a habit 
of waking up every half-hour through the night, to 
see whether it is time to wake up finally. 

Alarm-clocks are very good, provided they do not 
stop, and do go off. But if there is one day in the 
year on which the machine fails, it will be that very 
day that, of all others, it was necessary for you to 
start early. 

Servants are much relied upon for waking you up 
in hotels and at friends' houses. But of course they 
oversleep on that very morning when you must get 
the early train, or lose all the connections, and half a 
dozen appointments. And of course, too, everybody 
says, " How surprising that the servant did not wake ! 
Was never known to miss before. Always had been 
reliable ! " 

We have found one plan of waking to be very effec- 
tive. Let one preach a rousing sermon over night, 
become thoroughly excited, and he will wake early 
enough the next morning. We never miss Monday 
morning, whatever may be the fate of other days. 

The indefatigable E. M., — whose observations of 
weather have made him renowned, and whose re- 
ports have given to newspapers quite a set of weather- 
phrases, — has been in the habit for years of mak- 
ing hourly observations of the thermometer, day and 



116 EYES AND EAKS. 

night. Of course, the waking at night was an im- 
portant part of the business. He was the lucky owner 
of a dog that sympathized with his master, and di- 
vided the labor with him. For the intelligent little 
fellow, ev^ry time the clock struck at night, would 
spring up and scratch at his master's door, till E. M. 
came forth. Such nocturnal labors at length wore 
out his constitution, and science mourns the departed 
martyr of thermometric zeal and broken rest. 

Good healthy children, that are put to bed at night 
when birds and chickens retire, are admirable waken- 
ers in the morning. When they have slept their sleep 
full, there is no help for you. Wake they will, coo 
and frolic they will. All your hushing and humming 
are vain. Your efforts to put them to sleep only 
serve to wake you up ! A bouncing boy, a year old, 
creeping out of lijs crib slyly, and pouncing upon his 
father's face, with chirp and chuckle, is better than 
any alarm-clock. A clock will soon run out its 
cacophonous rattle, but a child never runs down, 
or ends his fun. 

But we have discovered a new method of waking 
early. Perched up upon our green hill-slope beyond 
Pcekskill, we have found it difficult to sleep after 
about four o'clock of summer mornings. For a 
countless multitude of birds, in all the trees and 
shrubbery, aim their notes at us with such sweet 
archery, that we are pierced through and through 
with the silver arrows of music. It is in vain that 
you wrap the pillows about your ears ! It is vain 
for you to reflect that you need sleep, and will not 
get up. Every one knows that an effort of will suf- 
ficient to resist the annoying or attractive sound 



HOW TO WAKE IN THE MORNING. 117 

is itself the end of sleep. While we are resisting, 
we are wakening. Thus, this very morning, all the 
trees about our little old house were belfries, and 
rang out more chimes than were ever heard at Co- 
logne or Antwerp. And, after the first recognition, 
we turned resolutely to the wall, determined to sleep 
on. But " That 's a robin," said our ears ; and 
" That 's a bobolink," — " There goes a wren " ; and 
sparrows, larks, phoebes, catbirds, and many of their 
cousins in the orchard and woods, all joined to laugh 
us out of the idea of sleeping. Now, if any one 
wishes to know how to get up early, we will tell 
him. Go out of the city early in the day. Seek 
some tranquil place in the country where guns are 
never heard, where fruit-trees and shade-trees abound, 
and where the shaking of the leaf, or the distant crow 
of chanticleer, is the loudest sound ever heard, except 
of birds. And then, after walking all day among the 
fields and hills and forests, and supping upon milk 
that never dreamed of a city-milkman, go to bed by 
nine o'clock. If you do not wake before five the next 
morning, report your case to us, and we will make 
a fresh prescription. 



118 EYES AND EARS. 

LETTER FROM THE COUNTRY. 

Office Editors of The Independent : — 




EAR SIRS : — Do you own a cow ? Every 
good man ought to. For a cow is the saint 
of the barn-yard. Not one of those final 
saints, who are born afar off from goodness, 
and fight their way to it, but one of those mild, meek, 
harmless, natural saints. If homeliness is necessary 
to goodness (and there is a strong presumption for 
the theory), a cow has this prime qualification For 
nothing can well be more devoid of all beauty than 
a genuine milker. There is not one line of beauty. 
There is not one limb that seems to have regard for 
another. The muscles are thin, the shoulders and 
neck flat and poor, the hind quarters wide across and 
gaunt, and the whole form is meagre, lathy, and pov- 
erty-stricken. But when we reflect that all this comes 
from a cow's benevolence, and that she eats, rumi- 
nates, digests, and, in short, lives, for the sake of oth- 
ers, our sense of her benevolence at length clothes her 
with a kind of moral beauty. She could be fat if she 
would only be selfish. But she economizes beauty, 
that she may be profuse in milk. Blessed saint ! And 
yet, in all the symbolism of saints, we do not remem- 
ber a single instance in which, the cow is advanced 
to signify anythmg in holy figure. Bulls and oxen, 
sheep and lambs, and holy rams, abound in pictorial 
legends. Lions and bears, dragons and eagles, ser- 
pents, bees, doves in endless repetition, stags, horses, 
crowing cocks, falcons, ravens, wild geese, fish, dogs, 



LETTER FROM THE COUNTRY. 119 

and wild boars, and we know not how many other 
creatures that swim, or fly, or walk, or creep, have been 
made glorious in stone and wood and paint, for some 
sake or other of the great multitude of saints whom 
the books record. But this noblest symbol of all, the 
very ideal and pattern of a saint, who is as poor as 
if living a life of maceration, who gives her whole 
strength to lacteal benevolence, who is patient, gentle, 
guileless, contented, — and yet, with two exceptions, 
no saint can be found (by us, at least) with a cow. 
These two saints are St. Ello and St. Perpetua. The 
second has wild cows by her side, and the first has 
cows with oxen about her. Let dairymen pay respect 
to the shadowy memory of St. Ello and St. Perpetua. 

If we were to speak of the musical voice of a cow, 
people would laugh. But the sound will depend upon 
circumstances. Let a man be lost in the woods, and 
suffer the terrible excitement which comes with the 
first flash of conviction that he is lost; let him dash 
wildly forth, and after an hour's running and hoarse 
hallooing, find that he has only swept a circle and 
come back to the very spot from which he started ; 
let him, toward the going down of the sun, weary, 
famished, and yet wandermg, hear the low of cows 
not far ofi"! No trumpet was ever so sweet on the 
march, and x-O lute ever charmed a lover with more 
delight than this uplifted sound of a cow to a wood- 
sick man. And when, running to the sound, he 
comes out near some farm-house, if tears gush, and 
he would fain even throw his arms around the neck 
of homely old brindle, let no one laugh or deride. 
Go and try the experiment, and see if you would not 
do it yourself! Besides, the /ace of a cow is hand- 



120 EYES AND EARS. 

some. It is the only thing about her that is beauti' 
ful, except by association ! 

But we need not go to all the trouble of being lost 
to reach the conclusion that a cow has a musical 
voice. Sitting on a summer evening on the sward, 
under the high, pendent elms, only enough conscious 
of being in the body to receive through it the most 
ineffable sense of the beauty of sights and sounds, and 
then, while birds are carrying the alto, and bees are 
making tenor, let the long and repeated low of cows 
coming home, and longing for their calves, rise as a 
bass, and tell me whether a cow has not a musical 
voice ! 

If one is of a devout turn, and would like some 
Scriptural associations, we can almost give him some. 
For, although oxen it was that were about the man- 
ger, according to all pictures, yet cows are the moth- 
ers of oxen. We read, too, in Scripture of " the pure 
milk of the Word " ; and the qualifying adjective 
would seem to imply that teachers in those days imi- 
tated the milkmen of ours, and gave a diluted article. 
From this great company of patient creatures, let us 
mention a few more eminent, such as St. Alderney, 
St. Ayrshire, St. Durham, and St. Homebreed. These 
are the most illustrious of milk-saints. But goodness 
is not confined to any of these denominations. There 
are capacious udders, patient dispositions, mild-eyed 
mothers, home-loving and pasture-browsing saints, 
without name and fame, in every neighborhood. 

And now, do you ask, wondering reader, what all 
this preludes ? Just this : that we are a three-cow 
gentleman-farmer! Again, we know what is the real 
taste of milk. We have once more, before we die, 



LETTER FROM THE COUNTRY. 121 

seen cream ! Twenty-six pans of milk were skimmed 
tins very morning ; and now, if you were riding past, 
you should see twenty-six inverted pans on the fence, 
in the sun, shining like silver, and sweetening them- 
selves all day, in the air and sunshine, for the night's 
milk ! Even the pigs fare better here than citizens do 
in New York. For although we take off the cream, 
we never think of giving them anything weaker than 
skim-milk ! — four pigs, that once were longer than 
broad, but which are rapidly growing to the shape of 
a marble. 

And now, having given this introduction, it may be 
expected that we shall go on to make some sound 
practical remarks about feeding, milking, making 
cheese and butter. And so we could if we chose to. 
And so we will, perhaps, by and by. But now we 
shall close by holding up the cow to all persons, as a 
model of disinterested benevolence not only, but as 
an instance of its reward. For though the homeliest 
creature on the farm, such is the effect upon the im- 
agination of real goodness, that at length, by associa- 
tion, men come to think a cow handsome. And thus 
it will be with all of us plain, common, and homely 
people. Let us do well until our neighbors see our 
characters rather than our faces ; and then, though 
born without beauty, we shall die handsome. 

The looking-glass may say what it pleases. The 
heart of friends is the mirror of good men. And in 
that glass we shall be beautiful enough, if we are 
good enough ! 



122 



EYES AND EARS. 



WEEDS IN PICTUKES. 




WEED is said to be " a plant out of place." 
An excellent definition ; for what is there, 
when appropriately placed, that deserves 
this name for vexatious worthlessness ? But 
a weed is often in its very place when well painted. 
We have learned to look upon many vegetable repro- 
bates with an eye of favor. Some weeds are exquis- 
itely beautiful in structure, in flower, or in leaf-forms, 
when closely examined. The habits of others make 
them subjects of great interest. We recollect once, 
while standing with one of the first landscape artists 
of America, before one of Baddington's views of the 
Thames, whose banks were clothed (pictorially) with 
magnificent aquatic plants, being surprised to hear 
him say, that in America we had few large, succulent 
plants fit for an artist among our native weeds. Since 
that time we have never gone into any meadow or 
field without noticing the plants as subjects of por- 
traiture. And I feel sure that there can be no ex- 
cuse for barrenness in the foregrounds of landscapes 
from want of material. It is the want of industry, or 
the want of real love for weed-like plants, that occa- 
sions such meagre or conventional pictures. It is 
seldom that we see plants rendered as Landseer or 
Rosa Bonheur render animals, with an enthusiasm of 
love that never tires, that never can enough repeat 
them. If our , right hand had been endowed with 
cunning, we believe that the humbler growths of the 
field should occupy much of its skill. But one must; 



WEEDS IN PICTURES. 123 

love well to paint well. If a man does not respect a 
plant, if it exerts upon him no positive and pleasur- 
able influence, lie is unfit to represent it. A nurse 
that does not love children can never take good care 
of them ; and an artist that does not love what are 
called weeds cannot do them justice. Some ridicule 
has been thrown upon our young artists for painting 
grasses so much. That they paint them at all is their 
praise ; and that they confine themselves to so few, 
and repeat their work so often, as if there were but 
half a dozen species in the world fit for admiration, is 
their real fault ! Instead of but few striking and 
effective plants, in any direction, growing abundantly, 
there are so many that one might well be embarrassed 
by riches. 

There is the dock family. None can be less pre- 
tentious or more meritorious. What if it does grow 
in dank and shaded places ? What a breadth of leaf 
the burdock exhibits, what vigor of health, what an 
oak-like spread of branches, when its blossom-stem is 
fully extended ! There, too, is the relishful horse- 
radish, of a broad and long palm. The elecampane 
is another plant of generous leaf. Laying aside all 
prejudices, who can deny great merit, as a robust and 
vigorous plant, to the skunk-cabbage ? What if its 
odor is an indisputable fact ? Art, in this respect, 
has the advantage of Nature. In a picture its peculiar 
and delicate green would be beautiful, without the 
least odor. 

Among upright plants the milkweed is notable. 
Not for its grace, but for its full habit and generous 
bearing. Tlie thistles, the brier family, the sedges, 
the cat-tail, the water-plantain family, the bind-weed, 



124 EYES AND EARS. 

m 

the woodbine, and the blackberry, both upright and 
creeping, than which, in early leaf, in blossom, or in^ 
fruit at every stage, nothing can be more graceful 
and beautiful, — these all deserve careful study. 

The mullein need hardly be mentioned, as it figures 
in pictures already. But what would be more ex- 
quisite than the spray of asparagus, if well rendered ? 
There, too, is the golden-rod, the aster, the iron- 
weed (Vernonia), the smart-weed, the teasel, and a 
hundred more, — admirable chiefly for ornamental 
designs and decorative patterns, but likewise fit ele- 
ments for the foregrounds of landscapes. It is worthy 
of notice, that the plants most valuable for culture on 
our continent are those which are most beautiful for 
ornamental design ; namely, wheat, rye, and barley, 
the Indian corn, the cotton and tobacco plants, the 
grape-vine and its fruit. The potato, poor homely 
fellow ! has no merit except in its blossom ; but 
almost all the plants which form the staple crops 
are universally beloved of artists. 

It is amusing to read the descriptions of weeds in 
agricultural books. Editors are bound to look upon 
weeds only in relation to farming. If a thing be pro- 
lific, tenacious of life, and voracious of food, no mat- 
ter how graceful its form or comely its blossom, it is 
hated, and all the ugly names of the vocabulary are 
heaped on it. But that should not prevent the ad- 
miration of those who have no crops to tend. A 
pestilent weed may yet be exquisitely ornamental. 

We are quite sure that it is the artist's fault if he is 
deficient in succulent foliage, in herbaceous riches, in 
all graceful stems and twining vines. Instead of a 
destitution of such elements, our woods, our low, wet 



THE RIGHT KIND OF FARMING. 125 

meadows, our hedges and hill-sides, are full of them. 
It requires only diligence in finding and industry in 
representing them to make every landscape artist's 
portfolio rich in vegetable treasures. 




THE RIGHT KIND OF FARMING. 

HERE are few places for a visit more de- 
lightful than a large and well-kept farm. 

The farm-house spacious, unpretending, 
neat, convenient ; the barns large, and clean ; 
the out-houses for pigs, poultry, tools, etc., well ar- 
ranged ; the bees humming endless music in thin, 
long row behind the house ; the garden, the fields, 
the forest ; these, together with the coming and going 
of herds, the steady progress of various kinds of 
work, the unwasteful abundance of provisions which 
in cities are doled out in close measure ; eggs fresh 
every day, sweet milk oppressed with cream, all man- 
ner of fruits in their season, and, above all, vegetables 
fresh from the garden, whose true flavor is unknown 
in cities, — no wonder that a farm excites the im- 
agination, and raises up a picture of delight and en- 
joyment. Speaking of vegetables, it may be cruel to 
say to people in the city, that they have no idea of the 
flavor of peas or of corn ; not unless they remember 
how they used to taste when they lived in the country. 
They must be eaten alive, or they are poor lux- 
uries. They should be plucked only long enough to 
be shelled or shredded for cooking. 



126 EYES AND EARS. 

Then, in the sultry days of July and August, as 
the great tureen comes steaming with the one, and 
the huge platter smoking with pyramids of the other, 
who cares for meats, or for all costly confections ? 
Peas alone are a feast ; and sweet corn, in its various 
methods, — on the cob, cut off and mixed with crejim, 
or raised into the ineffable glory of succotash^ — is a 
banquet which would have made all the gods forget 
ambrosia and nectar, and stroke their beards with 
celestial satisfaction. 

But this is a mere episode. To visit a farm as 
good company, to have horses at your disposal, to 
sit in the shade and hear the hens cackle for eggs 
laid, and cau-cau-caukle for contentment ; to watch 
the workmen at their task, — all this is quite charm- 
ing. But to carry on a farm is another thing — quite ! 

A farm is a vast manufactory. Instead of build- 
ings and machinery, you are to carry on manufactur- 
ing operations through the agency of the soil. No 
laboratory turns out a greater variety of products ; 
none requires for its highest success more knowl- 
edge, skill, and business tact. If a chemist were 
obliged to evolve his various products in such a way, 
as at the same time to build his houses, create his 
furnaces and implements, his task would be like the 
farmer's, who, while raising crops, is also bringing 
up the condition of his ground, and fitting it for its 
best functions. 

It is not difficult for a man to raise good crops, 
if he has money enough. A rich man can walk out 
of the city upon a poor farm, and in one year put 
ten thousand dollars' worth of expense upon it. He 
can make a soil, if he has money enough. But wheat 



THE EIGHT KIND OF FAEJ^HNG. 127 

that sells for a dollar a bushel will cost at least three ; 
and corn for seventy-five cents, will have cost two 
dollars. It is not hard to get good crops, if profit is 
of no account. A rich man plays with a farm, as 
children do with babies, dressing it up to suit his 
fancy, and quite indifferent to expense or profit. It 
is his fancy, and not his pocket, that he farms for. 
Such men are not useless. They employ many hands. 
They try a great many experiments which working 
farmers cannot afford to try. They show what can 
be done. And American farmers, although they will 
not imitate, will do better than that ; — they will take 
hints in this thing and that, and, by gradual improve- 
ment, they will raise their own style of farming many 
degrees. Every township ought to have one gentle- 
man farmer who aims to show what soil can be made 
to do. In his case it may not be remunerative. But, 
take the country through, the indirect effect will be 
very remunerative. His very mistakes will be useful. 
A mistake is often more instructive than a success. 
But it is not everybody who can afford so dear a 
schoolmaster. 

But, even with a pocket full of money, and with a 
farm as a mere play-ground, a rich man may carry 
on very foolishly. A careless, scheming foreman may 
waste vast sums of money, without producing one 
useful result, either to his employer or to the com- 
munity. Indeed, we scarcely know of any other 
sponge that will suck, in so short a time, so vast a 
quantity of money, as a farm recklessly carried on ! 
But, unlike a sponge, no squeezing will give back the 
precious contents. Buildings in bad taste 'and wrong- 
ly placed ; trees planted by the thousand, and dying 



128 EYES AND EAKS. 

almost as fast as planted ; the grounds drained at 
great expense, so as to require draining again in 
two or three years ; costly cattle and sheep bought, 
and then neglected ; experiments begun with great 
outlay, tired of, and given up before half completed ; 
— these, and such like things, are follies which have 
scarcely any compensating side. 

Although we use the word farming as including 
every variety of operation based upon the soil, yet 
the word covers occupations more dissimilar than 
are the occupations of the lawyer and the clergyman, 
or the schoolmaster and the blacksmith. What sim- 
ilarity is there in farming for fruit or farming for 
herbs ? What can be more unlike than a grazing 
farm, for stock or the dairy, and a grain farm, for 
sale or fattening stock ? How unlike is the conduct 
of a great plantation, raising one or two staples, and 
the farm of a score of acres, of mixed crops, raised 
by the owner's own hand for his own use. 

Leaving to the mood of other days some excellent 
remarks on these various kinds of farming, we avow 
our own preference, among all kinds and varieties 
of agricultural procedure, to meditative and imagi- 
native farming. Sitting in our barn-door, which, look- 
ing south, is raised one story above the yard beneath, 
what do we see ? Not the Hudson rolled out so 
wide as to take the name of Haverstraw Bay, nor the 
mountains beyond, nor yet the green and rounded 
tops of the near opposite hills, nor the fringes of 
forest which divide the several sections, nor the slopes, 
and basins, and tree-ruffled dwelling-houses. What 
do we see ? You would say that the object of our 
regard was a compost-heap. And by that polite term 



THE RIGHT KIND OF FARMING. 129 

let it be called. But you and I do not see the same 
thing when looking at that soil and straw and turf 
and litter. You see a round heap of fermenting 
materials. I see flowers and vegetables and fruits. 
Out of that heap blossom, to my eye, mignonette and 
phlox, and geraniums, roses, petunias, verbenas, asters, 
and dahlias ! I see regimental rows of currants, straw- 
berries, and raspberries. Great yellow-bellied pump- 
kins orb up to my siglft from among the withering 
stalks of ripened corn. Compost, indeed ! That is a 
grove of trees, a young orchard, long lines of elms, 
clumps of balmy evergreens. That is not undigested 
straw, but peas and flowering beans ; that is not lump- 
ish manure, but wheat and grapes ! Why, this barn- 
yard is a garden, if only looked at aright, purpled 
with innumerable flowers ; it is a vineyard, all of 
whose broad leaf-hands cannot cover up the purple 
clusters ; it is an orchard, — see the trees bending with 
fruit, or humming with insects and bees, that are re- 
galing themselves in its blossoms ! Ah ! here is rare 
delight ! Here sit I, a farmer indeed, all of whose 
fields, planted in imagination, tilled by fancy, are 
reaped in visions. 

My crops never fail. Weather never thwarts me. 
Everything succeeds. Men are always skilful, seed 
is always good, the hay is never caught by showers, 
the wheat escapes rust and fly that afflict newspapers 
so dreadfully about these days ; and, in short, as long 
as I have a comfortable support aside from these 
grounds, I mean to raise imaginations and medita- 
tions on this farm. It is a capital soil for such crops ! 

6* I 



130 EYES AND EAES. 



ARE BIRDS WORTH THEIR KEEPING? 




E receive many pleasant notes from rural 
friends upon country subjects. Two be- 
fore us are on birds and weeds. The first 
we publish, with remarks, below ; the other, 
from an artist in trouble, we shall give, with suit- 
able comfort, by and by. 

" Your special contributor, ' perched upon his green 
hill-slope beyond Peekskill,' writes about birds ; but 
there are some things about birds which he left un- 
said. It is very well to speak in their praise, but we 
should not be altogether blind to their faults. I enjoy 
their sport in the grove, as they leap from branch to 
branch, or hover around, cleaving the air ever and 
anon with swift wing. I am delighted with their 
beautiful and varied plumage. I am charmed with 
the sweetness and variety of their ceaseless songs. 
But, with all this, I am compelled to say, they are 
inveterate and incorrigible thieves and robbers, im- 
bued with mischief as the human heart with deprav- 
ity. I give my experience. 

" I am owner of a half-acre upon a ' hill-slope,' not 
on the banks of the Hudson, it is true, but bounding 
the valley of the Chemung. I planted upon it a grove 
and an orchard. I invited the birds to lodge and 
sport in their branches and find shelter beneath their 
foliage, and they accepted the invitation. Sweet was 
their song, and gay was their sport. Among my 
fruit-trees was a cherry producing rare, sweet, and 
early fruit. I watched its growing trunk and ex- 



ARE BIRDS WORTH THEIR KEEPING ? 131 

panding brandies from year to year, and in due 
course of the times and seasons hailed its opening 
blossoms. Day by day I marked the growth of the 
fruit, and at last saw the daily deepening blush over- 
spreading its cheek and betokening speedy ripeness. 
I promised my wife and children and myself a rich 
feast of the first fruit of the season. But, alas for hu- 
man hopes ! The birds had promised themselves the 
same thing, and in one day they plucked every cherry 
approaching toward ripeness from my tree. This they 
did every day, till not one remained. 

" But my tree was then small, and I thought as 
it should enlarge and produce more fruit, the birds 
would, after satisfying themselves, leave a little for 
me ; and so I waited, but in vain. The present sea- 
son I determined, if possible, to get a taste of my 
cherries, and when they began to ripen I placed a 
scarecrow in the tree. But the birds soon became 
acquainted with the scarecrow, and stole the fruit 
unterrified. I watched hours with stones, which I 
hurled at them, but they soon learned the uncertainty 
of my aim, and stood fire unmoved. I threatened a 
gun, but my wife and daughters said it was a pity to 
shoot such pretty birds, plucking the cherries so cun- 
ningly, and that they would rather go without the 
fruit than see them killed. So the birds again com- 
pleted their robbing, and to this day I have never 
tasted a fully ripe cherry from my favorite tree. I 
am a friend to the birds, whether they waken me 
early in the morning or not, if they will only abstain 
from my choice cherries. But with my present ex- 
perience, I have no«other alternative but to denounce 
them as thieves and pests — in cherry time. ** 

" Corniiifi:. N. Y." 



132 EYES AND EARS. 

There is no unmixed good in this world except 
dying, which cures all ill and inherits all blessing. 
But while living, what is there without an admixture 
of evil ? Even that wife, who properly restrained you 
from harming the birds, and evidently is a good wo- 
man, has probably some slight infelicities of disposi- 
tion. The very children, that carry the doubled ex- 
cellences of their parents, have they not some strokes 
of mischief? Indeed, sir, do you not find that you 
are obliged to take even yourself with some grains of 
allowance ? Why, then, should you demand that 
birds should be more perfect than anything else in 
this world? 

Let us state the case. Although birds undertake 
to furnish you with the most admirable amusement, 
and with music such as no orchestra could be hired 
to give, they do not charge you a penny for their 
services. You never have to wake them. You have 
no care of their toilet. You are asked to provide 
nothing for their breakfast, nothing for dinner, noth- 
ing for supper. They draw on you for no linen for 
their beds, and no space for tenement room. They 
come to you early in spring ; they stay with you till 
the red leaves grow brown, and even then they leave 
a rear-guard to watch the winter, and every bright 
day till after January is sentinelled with some faith- 
ful, simple bird on duty. 

And what is the service they render ? A thousand 
sparrows there are, without remarkable song, but 
whose very name recalls to you the memorable words 
of Christ. There is not another truth more needed 
and doubted by sorrowing and hard-used men, than 
that of God's personal care- over human interests. 



ARE BIRDS WORTH THEIR KEEPING ? 133 

There is scarcely a land on the globe now where the 
Bible does not say to men, " Are not two sparrows 
sold for a farthing ? And one of them shall not fall 
to the ground without your Father." And there is 
scarcely a rood of ground on the earth where this lit- 
tle bird does not flit before our eyes every day, tiny, 
homely, with only a chirp for a song ; but a text- 
bearer, a mission-bird, a remembrance to every dis- 
couraged soul of Christ's words of sweet assurance. 
I would feed a thousand sparrows with all the cher- 
ries that their little crops could carry, for the sake of 
that very truth which God has associated with their . 
name, and which they recite to me every day. For 
what cherry or currant or berry that they pluck from 
my trees can be worth to me what that fruit is which 
they bring to me from the Tree of Life ? 

But there is another sparrow, — the tribe is large, — 
the song-sparrow, whose note is the sweetest, we some- 
times think, of all the summer's birds. It is a perpet- 
ual songster. It comes early and stays late. It sings 
all day. We have heard its soft, clear, and exquis- 
itely sweet little snatch of melody, from out of the 
tree overhead, at two o'clock on a sultry day, with the 
thermometer at 90° and no wind stirring ! Is not that 
fidelity ? Dear little soul, I would give it all the cher- 
ries on the place for itself and fellows, and bushels 
more, if it would deign to confer upon me still the 
favor of such sweet utterances ! For, in good sooth, 
men are the beneficiaries and birds are the benefac- 
tors ! It is arrogance and egotism for us to regard in- 
sects, birds, and innocuous beasts, as honored in our 
mere tolerance ! They too are God's creatures. They 
too are a part of the filling up of the grand picture of 



134 EYES AND EARS. 

his earthly cathedral. They have an errand of their 
own, a place of honor ; and no one is to despise or 
patronizingly to condescend to notice that which God 
made, and makes, and rejoices over in every land and 
field upon the globe ! 

Next to these, we hear every day, just now, the 
wren. A pert, petite^ smart, brave little animated 
spark is he ! His song is a twisted thread of sweet- 
ness. His amazing assiduity in doing nothing is quite 
edifying. He is brave in battle, — as human bustling 
do-nothings seldom are, ^and will whip twice his 
weight of martins and swallows. 

But none of these mentioned birds are particularly 
fond of fruit. Seeds and insects form their diet in 
chief. The same is true of that artist, the bobolink, 
that sings at the North in a black and white livery ; 
bnt going South changes his coat and his note, and, 
like many another northern-bred black-coat, drops into 
good living, and grows fat in the rice-swamps, and for- 
gets to use his voice, except to call for more food, or 
raise an alarm-cry when there is some danger of los- 
ing what he has got. The chief depredators of the 
garden are the robin, the blue-jay, the oriole, and the 
pea-bird, or wax-wing. 

A man that would shoot a robin, except in fall, 
when, in flocks, they are gathered together to caravan 
the air in their long pilgrimage to Southern glades 
and forests, and then really and conscientiously for 
food, has in him the blood of a cannibal, and would, 
if born in Otaheite, have eaten ministers, and digested 
them too. 

Indeed, if it were not too much trouble to re-write 
what we have said of the song-sparrow, we would say 



ARE BIRDS WORTH THEIR KEEPING ? 135 

that the robin is our sweetest summer singer. This 
universal favorite has a variety of songs. All are 
sweet, but one rises far above all the rest. At even- 
ing, the sun gone down, the cows returned from pas- 
ture, the landscape radiant in its salient points, but 
growing dim and solemn underneath, then, as you sit 
musing in your door, you shall hear from a tree on 
the lawn, a little distant, a continuous calling song, 
full of sweet importunity mingled with sadness. It is 
the call for its absent mate. Sometimes it rolls and 
gurgles for but a moment, when a shadow flits through 
the air, and a sudden flash of leaves, the song stops, 
two birds glide out upon the sky, and fly to their 
home. But at other times the bird's grief is your 
gain. No coming mate shortens his song. Some re- 
morseless boy has brought him down, to sing, and 
build, and brood no more ; some cat or hawk or gaz- 
ing snake has dined upon the fair thing. And so, 
tliough the twilight falls, and the evening grows 
darker, the song calls on, pausing only to change the 
manner, throwing in here and there coaxing notes 
and staccato exclamations of impatience, but going 
back soon to the gushing, pining, yearning home-call. 
Take all my strawberries if you want them, singer ! 
Come to-morrow for my cherries ! You pay me in 
one single song for all that you can eat in a summer, 
and leave me still in your debt. For there is no such 
thing as paying for that which touches your heart, 
raises your imagination, wings your fancy, and carries 
you up, by inspired thoughts, above the level of selfish 
life. The heart only can pay the heart for good ser- 
vice. As to cherries, I '11 take my chance when my 
betters are served. Eat what you wish, sweet sir, 



136 EYES AND EARS. 

and if there are any left, I will think them all the 
sweeter, as a part of your banquet. 

As to the orioles, tliere are but few of them. I wish 
there were more. The jay too, though a brave eater, 
and a large one, sticks to the woods, for the most part, 
and comes but seldom to the garden. Its note is as 
terrible as the music of the Scotch bagpipe. We 
should thhik the spirits of a dozen old pipers had en- 
tered into every particular blue-jay, and their notes 
quarrelled and jangled in its throat which should 
be most cutting and cacophonous ! Yet the blue-jay 
won its way to our regard, and in this wise. When 
living in Indiana they sang a great deal about our 
little one-story house, and screamed and shrieked with 
such terrible vigor that our nerves gave way. We 
had had chills and fever, — were weak, and a little 
edgy. We took our gun and began an indiscriminate 
warfare. The jay is tenacious of life, and dies game. 
After a day or two of shooting, we began to admire 
the soldier-like quality of these splendid and high- 
plumed fellows. And when, with our last shot, we 
brought down a splendid specimen, half shot to pieces, 
but full of pluck, his eye briglit, his courage up, fight- 
ing for his life, that ebbed away, and dealing blows 
right and left at our hand with his stiff bill, and dying 
without flinching, pluck to the very last gasp, we were 
conquered, and vowed that we would never shoot such 
a brave bird again ! We never have. We never will. 

But, now, as to the wax-wings, or the little crested, 
yellow pea-birds, that never come to cheer you, that 
eat none of the marauding insects, that only sing a 
sharp "j»ee ^re," while they are gobbling down your 
fruit, or ripping out the peas from the tender pod, — 



COUNTRY STILLNESS AND WOODCHUCKS. 137 

wliy, we must say, that if any birds are to be shot, 
these are the ones. We do not recommend it. For 
it may scare the song-birds, and wound th» feelings of 
robins and their fellows. All the cherries on earth 
could not be so sweet in our mouth as are the notes 
of robins in our ears. These drops of sound are the 
true fruits, and the wide air is that garden universal 
which rears and shakes them down for all whose senses 
are refined enough to know how to feed by the eye 
and the ear, more than by the mouth ! 



COUNTRY STILLNESS AND WOODCHUCKS. 




GTHINGr marks the change from the city 
to the country so much as the absence 
of grinding noises. The country is never 
silent. But its sounds are separate, dis- 
tinct, and, as it were, articulate. The grinding of 
wheels in paved streets, the clash and din of a half- 
million men, mingling, form a grand body of sound, 
which, however harsh and dissonant to those near 
by, becomes at a little distance softened, round, and 
almost musical. Thus, from Brooklyn heights. New 
York sounds its diapason, vast and almost endless. 
The direction of the wind greatly influences the 
sound. When the air is moist, and the wind west, 
the city sends a roar across like the incessant break 
of surf upon the ocean shore. But with an eastern 
wind, the murmur is scarcely greater, and almost as 
soft, as winds moving gently in forests. 



138 EYES AND EARS. 

But it is not simply sound that acts upon us. There 
is a jar, an incessant tremor, that affects one more 
or less according to the state of his nerves. And, 
in leaving the city by rail-cars, the roar and jar of 
the train answer a good purpose in keeping up the 
sense of the city, until you reach your destination. 
Once removed from all these sound-making agencies, 
and one is conscious of an almost new atmosphere. 
Single sounds come through the air as arrows fly, 
but do not fill it. The crowing of a cock, the cawing 
of a crow, the roll of a chance wagon, and the patter 
of horses' feet, — these, one by one, rise into the air 
to stir it, and sink back again, leaving it without a 
ripple. For a time, this both excites and soothes. 
During the wakening hours the very stillness plays 
upon your imagination with importunity. You feel 
how still it is. You murmur to yourself, " how 
quiet ! how tranquil ! " On a side-hill, with a wide 
look-out, upon a rock, or under its shade, you lie 
for the hour stupid in the bath of stillness. The 
wings of birds that fly past you are audible. A leaf 
falling on a leaf reports itself. The squeak of field- 
mice, in their petty synods, the frolic and bark of 
squirrels, become very prominent sounds. 

I cannot say that such scenes are favorable to 
thovght. It is fancy that moves quickest then. It 
is a nourishing of the sentiments and feelings. The 
past and the future play together, and memory and 
expectation pitch sweet fancies to each other. 

We said that country silence was also soothing. Let 
the few first nights' sleep bear witness ! In the first 
place, men's habits right themselves. We dine at 
noon, not at sundown. We take tea in the broad 



COUNTEY STILLNESS AND WOODCHUCKS. 139 

light of the sun. And by nine o'clock the evening 
has become very late, and we nod and yawn, and drop 
off to bed. You look out first to see if all is right. 
The moon has it all her own way up there. There 
is not a breath of wind. The leaves hold as still as 
if they did not know how to swing and quiver. The 
cricket is singing. A whippowill stirs up fond re- 
membrances. Some super-serviceable dog lets off a 
bark, as if he had pulled the trigger by accident, 
then shuts his muzzle, and leaves the great round 
heavens almost empty of a sound. Ah ! these long 
country nights, full of unwakening sleep ! 

To find yourself in the morning just where you 
lay down ! To sleep without a wink, a roll, or the 
slightest change, eight hours, — that is to get back 
far toward boyhood again. 

Speaking of boyhood, did you ever hunt wood- 
chucks ? We remember well what venatorial perturba- 
tion our young bosom used to suffer on seeing a wood- 
chuck popping up his head above the grass, and with 
what headlong zeal' we plunged after him, invariably 
to just miss catching him as his tail disappeared down 
his hole. This region seems to be a favorite haunt 
for these marmots. Some dozen, we judge, are ten- 
ants on our farm. The boys have made several saga- 
cious forays upon them with arms and dog, but 
Sir Marmot has always been just a little too deep 
for them. Not so the dog. Jocko had been down 
upon a visit to a neighboring dog, talking of rabbits, 
cats, and other things which have power over dogs' 
imaginations. On his way home, a young wood- 
chuck, whose ma did not know that he was out, 
inadvertently exposed himself. The temptation was 



140 EYES AND EAES. 

too strong for Jocko. With one or two tremen 
dous bounds, a nip, and a very busy Bhaking, the 
work was done. For all the good his parents had 
of him, the woodchuck might as well not have been 
born. John skinned him neatly. He was roasted. 
The family sat around. The lady of the house per- 
emptorily refused to touch the "varmint." The 
eldest son agreed to support the father, and the two 
younkers were fierce to eat woodchuck ! The head 
of the family disposed of one mouthful, and looked 
around. Being watched, he boldly took a second, and 
was imitated. But about the third taste made it plain 
that woodchuck satisfies the appetite very speedily. 

These singular, chubby, nimble fellows have a very 
good time of it, on the whole. They wake up from a 
winter's sleep ; enjoy the spring, summer, and autumn. 
They have no migration to attend to. They lay up 
no stock of winter food. When the time comes, they 
roll up into a heap in the chamber of their burrow, 
poke their nose into their belly, and tuck their tail 
around, to make a good finish, and then they outsleep 
storms, snow, and winter. But we have saved one 
member of this family even this trouble. We have 
looked in the Prices Current of The Independent in 
vain to find the ruling prices of woodchuck-skins. 
Can any one inform us ? From the amazing enter- 
prise shown by the boys, hitherto, they might turn 
an honest penny yet, in selling packs of woodchuck- 
skins ! 

Meanwhile, my young marmots, you are welcome 
to all the clover you can eat, to all the holes you dig. 
You may sit serene after your morning feed, and sun 
yourselves without fear of the boys, for really, jesting 



A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. 141 

apart, tliej are not half as smart as you are. Don't 
flinch if they shoot, especially if they take aim. But 
beware of the dog. He does not say much. He is 
apt to perform first, and promise afterwards. 



A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. 




HEN I was a lad of thirteen years, my father 
removed from a country town to Boston. 
Nothing of all its sights produced upon 
me such an impression as the ships. The 
outlying bay, the ocean beyond, its mystery, the ships 
coming in and going out, the masts and rigging, 
standing up against the sky, — these things produced 
an indelible impression on my imagination. All the 
world rose up to my fancy. Real and fabulous things 
commingled, — voyagers and buccaneers, merchant- 
men and pirates, fleets of men-of-war, came before 
my inward sight, and all distant lands and famous 
islands. Long Wharf has taught me a great deal of 
geography and sea-history. 

But the Navy- Yard, in the adjoining town of 
Charlestown, separated only by Charles River from 
Boston, was my especial wonder and glory. I be- 
came familiar with all its marvels. I crept down to 
the bottom of its huge and dismantled ships, I climbed 
up to the decks of those which were building in the 
covered ship-houses, I watched the construction of its 
famous stone Dry Dock, I ranged along the silent 
mouths of its massive cannon. 



142 EYES AND EARS. 

One day I visited some ill-constructed vaults wliere 
sliot had been stored. The six and twelve pound 
shot were extremely tempting. I had no partic- 
ular use for them. I am to this day puzzled to 
know why I coveted them. There was no chance 
in the house to roll them, and as little in the street. 
For base-ball or shinty they were altogether too sub- 
stantial. But I was seized with an irresistible de- 
sire to possess one. As I had been well brought up, 
of course the first objection arose on the score of 
stealing. But I disposed of that, with a patriotic fa- 
cility that ought long before this to have sent me to 
Congress, by the plea that it was no sin to steal from 
the government. Next, how should I convey the 
shot from the yard without detection ? I tried it in 
my handkerchief. That was altogether too plain. 
I tried my jacket-pocket, but the sag and shape of 
that alarmed my fears. I tried my breeches-pocket, 
but the abrupt protuberance was worse than all. I 
had a good mind to be honest, since there was no 
feasible way of carrying it off. At length a thought 
struck me. Wrap a handkerchief about it, and put 
it in your hat. 

Now all the world knows that a boy's hat serves 
as a universal pocke'o. There he carries handker- 
chief, papers, twine, letters for the post-office, tops; 
in short, whatever traps the pocket cannot hold, or 
whatever contraband thing would show through, goes 
to the bat. Is a hen's-nest found out, the hat takes 
the eggs. Is fruit to be gathered, the hat takes it. 
Is the boy heaping up stones to fire at cats, birds, 
dogs, and strangers, the hat collects and carries them 
to the heap. Does a boy want a butterfly, the hat 



A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. 143 

is liis net to cast over it. "Would he smack a fly or 
a bee, his hat is better than a bat. It is his fan 
wlien hot and his protection when cold. And as age 
gives it suppleness, it mounts into the air as a poor 
foot-ball. By that very signal, too, you may know 
when school is let out: hats go up. And Sunday 
morning may be detected, if one has lost his reckon- 
ing, by the style and sobriety of boys' hats. It is the 
only day of rest for hats as well as for boys. 

The iron ball was accordingly swaddled with the 
handkerchief and mounted on my head and the hat 
shut over it. I emerged from the vault a little less 
courageous than was pleasant, and began my march 
toward the gate. Every step seemed a mile. Every 
man I met looked unusually hard at me. The ma- 
rines evidently were suspecting my hat. Some sailors, 
leering and rolling toward the ships, seemed to look 
me through. The perspiration stood all over my face 
as an officer came toward me. Now for it ! I was to 
be arrested, put in prison, cat-o'-nine-tailed, or shot for 
aught I knew. I wished the ball in the bottom of the 
sea ; but no, it was on the top of my head ! 

By this time, too, it had grown very heavy ; I must 
have made a mistake in selecting! I meant a six- 
pounder, but I was sure it must have been a twelve- 
pounder, and before I got out of the yard it weighed 
twenty-four pounds ! I began to fear that the stiffiiess 
with which I carried my neck would excite suspicion, 
and so I tried to limber up a little, which had nearly 
ruined me, for the shot took a roll around my crown 
in a manner that liked to have brought me and my 
hat to the ground. Indeed, I felt like a loaded can- 
non, and every man and every thing was like a spark 



144 EYES AND EAKS. 

trying to touch me off. The gate was a great way 
farther off than I ever had found it before ; I seemed 
likely never to get there. 

And when, at length, heart-sore and head-sore, with 
my scalp well rolled, I got to the gate, all my terror 
came to a culmination as the sentinel stopped his 
marching, drew himself up, and, looking at me, smiled. 
I expected him to say, " O, you little thievish d — 1, do 
you think I do not see through you ? " — but, bless his 
heart, he only said, " Pass ! " He did not say it twice. 
I walked a few steps farther, and then, having great 
faith in the bravery of my feet, I pulled my hat off be- 
fore me, and carrying it in that position, I whipped 
around the first corner, and made for the bridge with 
a speed which Flora Temple would envy. 

When I reached home, I had nothing to do with my 
shot. I did not dare show it in the house, nor tell 
where I got it ; and after one or two solitary rolls, I 
gave it away on the same day to a Prince-Streeter. 

But, after all, that six-pounder rolled a good deal of 
sense into my skull. I think it was the last thing that 
I ever stole (excepting a little matter of a heart, now 
and then), and it gave me a notion of the folly of cov- 
eting more than you can enjoy, which has made my 
whole life happier. It was rather a severe mode of 
catechizing, but ethics rubbed in with a six-pound shot 
are better than none at all. 

But I see men doing the same thing, — going into 
underground, dirty vaults, and gathering up wealth 
which will roll round their heads like my cannon-ball, 
and be not a whit softer because it is gold instead of 
iron, though there is not a man in Wall Street who 
will believe that. 



MY POCKETS. 



145 



I have seen a man put himself to every humiliation 
to win a proud woman who has been born above him, 
and when he had won her, he walked all the rest of 
his life with a cannon-ball in his hat. 

I have seen young men enrich themselves by pleas- 
ures in the same wise way, sparing no pains, and scru- 
pling at no sacrifice of principle, for the sake, at last, 
of carrying a burden which no man can bear. 

All the world are busy in striving for things that 
give little pleasure and bring much care ; and in my 
walks among men, I often think. There is a man steal- 
ing a cannon-ball ; or. There 's a man with a ball on 
his head ; I know it by the way he walks. The money 
which a clerk purloins for his pocket at last gets into 
his hat like a cannon-ball. Pride, bad temper, selfish- 
ness, evil passions, will roll upon a man as if he had 
a ball on his head ! And ten thousand men in New 
York will die this year, and as each one falls, his hat 
will come off, and out will roll an iron ball, which for 
years he has worn out his strength in carrying ! 



MY POCKETS. 




POCKET, if not a faculty of the human 
mind, or an organ of the human body, 
must be regarded as an indispensable ad- 
junct to both. The Pocket is the badge of 
civilization, and what it contains, the very element of 
discrimination between man and man. My pockets 
have been the occasion of great trouble to me, ever 

7 J 



146 EYES AND EAES. 

since I was married. It ought to be understood that 
I have a wife whose very life-pleasure consists in tak- 
ing good care of her husband. T dare not say that 
she is perfect. Perhaps that might cause her death, 
for the scarcity of such persons living makes me sure 
people die as soon as they become perfect. 

But she is as nearly perfect as it was thought that 
such a poor sinner as I am could endure. Not only 
does she review my clothes, bring all buttons and but- 
ton-holes every week to the general muster, return 
my stockings to the drawer without a hole, save the 
necessary one for foot-entrance, and give me immacu- 
late linen, but she examines my pockets, and calls me 
to a strict account both for what she finds there, and 
yet oftener for what she does not find ! 

All those obliging little notes, those pleasant letters 
of sentiment which it is so agreeable to receive and so 
awkward to explain, if by any negligence I leave them 
in my pocket, bring me into the most affectionate cat- 
echism. So, too, if I run up a little cosey bill for 
books or engravings, — a mere private matter of my 
own, in no way chargeable to family expenses, — un- 
less I am on hand before the first of July and Janu- 
ary, (those two J's are like executioners' spears to 
many a moneyless wretch !) the thoughtless shop- 
keeper sends them to me by post. Of course they 
come during my absence. They are accidentally 
opened ! But, after all, — what a blessing they occa- 
sion. But for them, I should lose that laying on of 
the hand upon mine, that sad, earnest look, and those 
excellent counsels, which I might call golden were it 
not that they spring from the very absence of gold ! 

Then, again, I am commissioned to deposit a letter 



MY POCKETS. 147 

in the office, and put it for carriage into my pocket, 
and wickedly continue carrying it there a whole week, 
without excuse or extenuation ! And I do wonder 
that I am let off as easily as I am. And if I take a 
letter from the office, instead of bringing it directly 
home to its superscription, it goes circuiting about in 
routes not laid down in any mail contract. Of course 
such things bring a man into disgrace in any well-reg- 
ulated family. 

But all these things are mere mishaps, compared 
with the regular, chronic, incurable fault of my pock- 
et in money matters. It seems as if I were foreor- 
dained to lose money. Yet I am free from all vices ; 
I do not gamble, drink, smoke, race, or bet. The 
worst that I know of myself is an addiction to book- 
stores, print-shops, and picture-dealers' haunts. No, I 
lose it. It must be the fault of my pocket. At first, 
I pleaded the shallowness of my vest pockets. My 
wife then transferred my wallet to my pantaloons, but 
with no change in my misfortunes. I had my pockets 
examined, but no hole was found. New ones were 
made, deeper ones, of better cloth, with the best of 
buttoning adjustments. Alas ! the same thing con- 
tinued ! I tried my neighbor's tailor. My neighbor 
never lost money. A ten-dollar bill went through the 
week unbroken, as surely as a ship goes through a 
summer voyage. Nobody had ever been known to 
pick his pockets. Many people had tried to introduce 
a kind of burglarious instrument, called Benevolence, 
known to be very adroitly used in easing the pocket. 
But all failed here. These were the pockets for me ! 
I got a pair of pantaloons of the same cloth which he 
wore, with the same pockets. Now was I proud and 



148 EYES AND EARS. 

presumptuous. And soon was I abased to the very 
dust before my wife, having lost all mj money, and 
being aole to give no sort of satisfactory account of it. 

This long series of misfortunes has very much 
broken my pride and quenched my hopefulness. I 
no longer dream that I shall earn the name of the full- 
pocketed gentleman ; the man of a long pocket ; the 
man of an iiupregnable pocket ! And I am sure that 
hopelessness is making me more and more careless. 
Almost anybody can get access to my pocket. Chil- 
dren subtract from me. The poor subtract from my 
pockets. All unfortunates seem to know where my 
pocket is. Every man that has curious things, old 
books, venerable old maps, etchings, engravings, or 
pictures, has heard about my pockets. Every book- 
seller in town drives through them as easily as 
through a city gate. Is there any remedy? 

Is there no such thing as a pocket-fastener ? Are 
inventions all used up, or can there yet be invented 
something that will stop up leaky pockets ? We can 
caulk the seams of ships, mend leaky roofs, keep in 
and keep out moisture by india-rubber garments ; but 
can there be no remedy for leaking pockets ? I am 
prepared to give one half of all that is saved to the 
man who will make my pockets trustworthy, and he 
will find that to be ample enough for a contented 
man to live upon respectably! 

P. S. The thing is invented ! The discovery is 
made ! It was just whispered in my ear, as I wrote 
the last line. " Take your wife with you whenever 
you go out." Here, good woman, I will pay as I 
promised. You shall have the half of all you save ! 



JOYS AND SORROWS OF EGGS. 149 



JOYS AND SORROWS OF EGGS. 




CRN in the country, our amusements were 
few and simple ; but what they lacked in 
themselves we supplied from a buoyant and 
overflowing spirit of enjoyment. A string 
and a stick went further with us, and afforded more 
hearty enjoyment, than forty dollars' worth of trinkets 
to our own cliildren. Indeed, it would seem as if the 
enjoying part of our nature depended very much upon 
the necessity of providing its own pleasures. There 
are not many of our earlier experiences which we 
should particularly care to renew. We are content to 
renew our wading and grubbing after sweet-flag root 
only in memory. The nuttings were excellent in their 
way, the gathering of berries, the building of snow- 
houses, and the various games of summer and winter, 
on land, ice, or snow. We keep them as a pleasant 
background of recollection, without any special wish 
to advance them again into the foreground. 

But one thing we shall never get over. We shall 
never lose enthusiasm for hen's-nests. The sudden 
cackling outcry of a faithful old hen, proclaiming the 
wonder of her eggs, we shall never hear without the 
old flush and wish to seek and bring in tlie vaunted 
trophy. The old barn was very large. It abounded 
in nooks, sheds, compartments, and what-nots, admi- 
rably suited to a hen's love of egg-secretiveness. And 
no lover ever sought the post-office for an expected 
letter with half the alacrity with which we used to 
search for eggs. Every barrel, every manger and bin. 



150 EYES AND EARS. 

every pile of straw or stack of cornstalks, every mow 
and grain-room, was inspected. And there was al- 
ways the delightful hope that a new nest would sud- 
denly open up to us. For every one properly born 
and well brought up knows that hen's-nests are fortu 
itous, and are always happening in the most surpris- 
mg manner, and in the most unexpected places. And 
though you bring all your great human brain to bear 
upon the matter, a silly old hen will tuck away a dozen 
eggs, right under your eyes, and will walk forth daily 
after each instalment with a most domestic air and 
tone of taunting, saying, as plain as inarticulate sounds 
can proclaim it, " I Ve laid an egg ! I 've laid an egg ! 
I 've laid another ! — You can't find it ! You won't 
find it ! I know you won't ! " And sure enough we 
can't find it, and don't find it, until, after a due time, 
the gratified old fuss leads forth all her eggs with in- 
finite duckings responsive to endless peepings ! Be- 
hold ! there was the nest in a clump of grass not a 
yard from a familiar path ! 

The knowledge that a nest might dawn upon us at 
any time kept our youthful zeal more alert than ever 
Columbus was to discover this little nest of a conti- 
nent. Sometimes we detected the sly treasure in the 
box of the chaise ; sometimes an old hat held more in 
it when cast into a corner than in its palmy days. The 
ash-bin was an excellent spot. The fireplace under 
an old abandoned Dutch-oven was a favorite haunt. 
We have crept, flat as a serpent, under the whole 
barn, fearless of all the imaginary monsters which, to 
a boy's imagination, populate dark holes, and have 
come forth flaxed from head to foot with spider's- 
webs, well rewarded if only a few eggs were found. 



JOYS AND SORROWS OF EGGS. * 151 

All, how it comes back to us now ! The round, rosy 
face of a younger brother ; the quiet, dreaming search 
of a sister, who always was looking, and never finding 
what she did look for, and always finding what she did 
not. And then, when the spring was wide-awake, rear- 
ing her brood of flowers, and the air smelt of new grow- 
ing things, and showers were warm, and clouds were 
white and fleecy, and wandered about the pale blue 
heaven, like straggling flocks of pasturing sheep ; and 
new-mated birds kept honeymoon in every bush and 
tree, and sang amatory poems that Burns might have 
envied ; and new farrows in every field attracted flocks 
of worm-loving blackbirds, and everything was gay 
and glad and musical, the very flies having music in 
their wings ; and bees, like wicked poets, singing of 
the flowers which they had robbed ; — (well, let 's see, 
tliis long sentence has bewildered us, and we forget 
exactly what. we started for. 0, now we remember.) 
Well, in these fervent, soft, brooding days, even hens 
felt the celestial fire, and piled up their poetical du- 
ties in full and overflowing nests, till boys' hearts fairly 
throbbed with delight, and the pans hi the closet 
swelled up in rounded heaps, until egg could no 
longer lie upon egg ! 

Now it sometimes happened that, when busy about 
the " chores," — foddering the horse, throwing down 
hay to the cows (yet requiring a supplemental lock at 
night to eke out the day's pasturage) j we discovered a 
nest brimming full of hidden eggs. The hat was the 
bonded warehouse of course. But sometimes it was a 
cap not of suitable capacity. Then the pocket came 
into play, and chiefly the skirt pockets. Of course, we 
intended to transfer them immediately after getting 



152 EYES AND EAKS. 

into the house, for eggs are as dangerous in the pocket, 
though for different reasons, as powder would be in a 
forgeman's pocket. And so, having finished the even- 
ing's work, and put the pin into the stable-door, we 
sauntered toward the house, behind which, and right 
over Chestnut Hill, the broad moon stood showering 
all the east with silver twilight ! All earthly cares 
and treasures were forgot in the dreamy pleasure, and 
at length entering the house, — supper already de- 
layed for us, — we drew up the chair, and peacefully 
sunk -into it, with a suppressed and indescribable crunch 
and liquid crackle underneath us, which brought us up 
again in the liveliest manner, and with outcries which 
seemed made up of all the hen's cackles of all the eggs 
which were now holding carnival in our pockets ! Fa- 
cilis descensus Aver no ^ sed revocare gradum, &c., which 
means, It is easy to put eggs into your pocket, but how 
to get them out again, that 's the question. And it 
was the question ! Such a hand-dripping business, — 
such a scene when the slightly angry mother and the 
disgusted maid turned the pockets inside out ! 

We were very penitent! It should never happen 
again ! And it did not — for a month or two. Then 
a sudden nest, very full, tempted us, and we fortified 
our courage, as, of course, the same accident could 
not happen twice. The memory of the old disaster 
would certamly prevent any such second ridiculous 
experience ! 

But it chanced there was company in the house. 
Cousins and gladly-received neighbors. And amidst 
the gratulations and the laugh and the hand-shak- 
ings, they began to sit down, and we also sat qui- 
etly down, but rose up a great deal quicker ! Our 
disgrace was total. Such a tale as we unfolded ! 



JOYS AND SORROWS OF EGGS. 1^3 

Three times within our melancholy remembrance 
did we perform this shameful act, until a hen's-nest 
affected us with peculiar horror. 

Are we the only man that sits down on eggs? Is 
not the whole world hunting nests, and laying up their 
treasures in pockets behind them, and sitting down 
on all their spoils, when it is too late ? Are there not 
other things beside eggs, which are very fair on the 
outside, and very clean if tenderly handled, which, 
when broken, are most foul to the raiment and the 
touch ? Are there no men whose experience of long- 
sought love is but eggs in the pocket of one who sits 
down? Are there no men filling their pockets with 
thin-shelled, golden eggs, which fortune lays, and 
which they mean to carry home, and employ for all 
domestic uses, but which in the end are crushed and 
only soil their pockets ? 

We said we performed the feat three times. Why 
should we conceal the fact that we have understated 
the number? Let us make a clean pocket of the 
matter, and confess that it happened oftener, and 
even after we were grown up and married ! The 
wife's admirable conduct on the occasion established 
her reputation. And if any one, before venturing 
upon the untried navigation of matrimony, would 
test the patience and gentleness of any angelic per- 
son, we would advise him to sit down on a dozen 
eggs in her presence, and witness then the devel- 
opments of her disposition in the disaster. There 
are a hundred women who would follow Florence 
Nightingale into a plague hospital, where there is 
one who would put her hand into his pocket after 
such a drear experience as we have recorded ! 

7* 



154 EYES AND EAES. 



THE DUTY OF OWNING BOOKS. 




E form judgments of men from little things 
about their houses of which the owner per- 
haps never thinks. In earlier years, when 
travelling in the West, where taverns were 
scarce and in some places unknown, and every settler's 
house was a house of " Entertainment," it was a mat- 
ter of some importance and some experience to select 
wisely where you would put up. And we always 
looked for flowers. If there were no trees for shade, 
no patch of flowers in the yard, we were suspicious 
of the place. But, no matter how rude the cabin or 
rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window 
held a little trough for flowers, and tliat some vines 
twined about strings let down from the eaves, we 
were confident that there was some taste and care- 
fulness in the log-cabin. In a new country, where 
people have to tug for a living, no one will take the 
trouble to rear flowers unless the love of them is 
pretty strong ; and this taste blossoming out of plain 
and uncultivated people is itself like a clump of hare- 
bells growing out of the seams of a rock. We were 
seldom misled. A patch of flowers came to signify 
kind people, clean beds, and good bread. 

But in other states of society other signs are more 
significant. Flowers about a rich man's house may 
signify only that he has a good gardener, or that he 
nas refined neighbors, and does what he sees them do. 
But men are not accustomed to buy books unless they 
want them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man of 



THE DUTY OF OWNING BOOKS. 155 

slender means we find that lie contents himself with 
cheap carpets, and very plain furniture, in order that 
he may purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. 
Books are not made for furniture, but there is noth- 
ing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The 
plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered 
is more significant of refinement than the most elabo- 
rately carved etagere or sideboard. 

Give us a house furnished with books rather than 
furniture ! Both, if you can, but books at any rate ! 
To spend several days in a friend's house, and hunger 
for something to read, while you are treading on costly 
carpets, and sitting upon luxurious chairs, and sleep- 
mg upon down, is as if one were bribing your body 
for the sake of cheating your mind. 

Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, aug- 
menting the comforts of home, and lavishing money on 
ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon every- 
thing but what the soul needs ? We know of many 
and many a rich man's house where it would not be 
safe to ask for the commonest English classics. A 
few gairish annuals on the table, a few pictorial mon- 
strosities, together with the stock religious books of his 
"persuasion," and that is all! No poets, no essayists, 
no historians, no travels or biographies, no select fic- 
tions, or curious legendary lore. But the wall-paper 
cost three dollars a roll, and the carpets four dollars a 
yard! 

Books are the windows through which the soul looks 
out. A house without books is like a room without 
windows. No man has a right to bring up his chil- 
dren without surrounding them with books, if he has 
the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. 



156 



EYES AND EAKS. 



He cheats them ! Children learn to read by bemg in 
the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes 
with reading and grows upon it. And the love of 
knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant 
against the inferior excitement of passions and vices. 
Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly 
in great, bookless houses ! Let us congratulate the 
poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man 
may every year add a hundred volumes to his library 
for the price of what his tobacco and his beer would 
cost him. Among the earliest ambitions to be excited 
in clerks, workmen, journeymen, and, indeed, among 
all that are struggling up in life from nothing to some- 
thing, is that of owning, and constantly adding to, a 
library of good books. A little library growing larger 
every year is an honorable part of a young man's his- 
tory. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is 
not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. 



MY PROPERTY. 




KNOW few men as rich as I am. I scarcely 
know where I amassed all my treasures. 
I have but a few things at home, and they 
are very precious, animate and inanimate. 
But, dear me, if you suppose that that is all I own, 
you never were more mistaken in your life ! 

I have every ship that comes into New York harbor, 
but without any of the gross trouble which those de- 
luded men have who think they own them. I never 



MY PEOPERTY. 157 

concern myself about the crews or officers, about freight 
or voyage, about expenses or losses. All this would be 
wearisomCo I have certain men who look after these 
things, while I am left to the pure enjoyment of their 
beauty, their coming and going, the singing of the 
anchor-hoisting crew. 

I go about the wharves, watch the packages going 
in or coming out of ships. The outlandish inscrip- 
tions, the ceroons of indigo piled up, the stacks of tea- 
chests, the bales and boxes, the wine and spices, all 
pass under my inspection. I say inwardly to the men : 
" Let these things be taken care of without troubling 
me," and I am obeyed. I have also many ship-yards, 
where they are building all kinds of craft. Other men 
pay the money ; I take the pleasure, and they the anx- 
ious care ! 

The Yacht Club have been very obliging to me. At 
great expense they have equipped unequalled boats, 
that suit me to a nicety. I ask nothing better. They 
are graceful as swans, beautiful as butterflies. If I 
had them all to care for, my pleasure would cost me 
rather dear. But, with extreme delicacy, the gentle- 
men of the Club relieve me of all that gross and mate- 
rial part of it, and leave me the boats, the pleasure, 
the poetry of the thing; and once or twice in a season 
I go down the bay, on a breezy morning, and see these 
fine fellows sail their craft, and I do believe that if 
they were doing it for their own selves, instead of for 
my enjoyment, they would not exert themselves more. 

Then, how much have I to thank the enterprising 
shopkeepers, who dress out their windows with such 
beautiful things, changing them every few days lest I 
should tire. It is a question of duty and delicacy with 



158 EYES AND EARS. 

me whether I ought not to go in often as thus : " Good 
morning, Mr. Stewart, Good morning, Mr. Lord, or 
Mr. Taylor. I am greatly obliged to you for those fine 
goods in the window. I have enjoyed them amazingly, 
as I did the other patterns of last week. Pray, sirs, 
do not put yourselves to all this trouble on my account. 
Yet, if your kindness insists upon it, I shall be but too 
happy to come and look every day at such rare pro- 
ductions of the loom." In the same way I am put 
under very great obligations to Messrs. Appleton & 
Co. It is affecting to see such kindness as they have 
shown, in going to great expense to procure fine ster- 
eoscopic views for the entertainment of their friends. 
It must be a great expense to them. But then they 
are displayed, free as grass in meadow or dandelions 
by the roadside, and any one can look for nothing, and 
without any other risk than that of purchasing ! On 
the same side of Broadway is a firm so benevolent that 
some Dickens ought to embalm them as a " Cheeryble 
Brothers," — of course, I mean Messrs. Williams and 
Stevens, who pay out great sums every year, in order 
to fill their windows with pleasant sights for passers- 
by. Some surly old rich men there are in New York 
who hoard and hide their pictorial treasures. Not so 
these benevolent gentlemen. They let their light shine ; 
and with rare delicacy, lest the eye should tire of rep- 
etition, they change their pictures every week. Then 
here is Mr. Seitz, who has ransacked all Europe for 
brilliant impressions of the rarest classical engravings, 
and has brought together a collection which cannot 
probably be equalled or approached by any similar 
concern in the world. Only to think of such pains- 
taking kindness ! And then if one loves books, how 



MY PROPERTY. 159 

many are there besides Messrs. Appleton or Mr. Scrib- 
ner who will rejoice in seeing you before their shelves, 
warming in kindred feeling to these children dressed 
in calf. I am sometimes overwhelmed with the sense 
of my riches in crockery and china, in sewing-ma- 
chines, in jewelry, in furniture, in fine wall-paper, in 
new inventions. 

And then how many men build handsome houses 
for me to look at, and fill their yards with flowers for 
me to nod to, and place the most beautiful faces of the 
family in the window to cheer me as I pass ! Surely 
this is a kind-hearted world ! And then how many 
fine country-seats are built, and grounds laid out, 
for my enjoyment. The fee simple may be in some 
other man, but I own them. For he owns a thing 
who understands it best, and gets the most enjoyment 
from it ! 

This world was made for poor men, and therefore 
the greatest part of it was left out of doors, where ev- 
erybody could enjoy it. And though men have been 
building and fencing for six thousand years, they have 
succeeded in getting very little of the universal treas- 
ure sequestered and out of sight. Suppose you can- 
not plough that fertile field, or own the crops, or reap 
the harvests, is there no pleasure to you in a fine field, 
a growing crop, a good harvest ? In fact, I sometimes 
fancy that I enjoy ploughing and mowing more when 
other people are engaged in them than if I were work- 
ing myself. Sweat away, my hearties, I say ; I am in 
the shade of this tree watching you, and enjoying the 
scene amazingly. I love to go into the pasture and 
look over those sleek Devonshires. The owner is very 
kind. He has paid thousands of dollars for them ; he 



160 EYES AND EARS. 

has spent I know not how much for the barns and 
premises ; he keeps several careful m^ to tend them, 
and all for my enjoyment and yours ! We walk throvigh 
the fields, handle their silky vests, discuss their points, 
and enjoy the whole herd, full as much as the so-called 
owner ! 

Sometimes I go out to look after my farms, for I 
own all the best ones hereabouts. And the orchards, 
the gardens, the greenhouses, the stately forests and 
exquisite meadows that I possess, divested too of all 
vexation of taxes, care, or work, are enough to make 
one's heart swell with gratitude. 

Besides all this, there is a royal artist that rises ear- 
lier than I do every day, and works gloriously every 
hour, painting pictures in the heavens, and over all 
the earth, giving inimitable colors, unexampled chiaro- 
oscuro, filling the day and the world with scenes that 
the canvas never equalled. And this stately gallery, 
with a dome like heaven, stands open without fee or 
impudent janitor, to every poor man that has eyes. 
And the best of all is, that, glorious as is this mani- 
festation, it is but a hint and outlying suggestion of 
a world transcendently better, not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens ! 



MEN NEED WHAT THEY DO NOT WANT. 161 



MEN NEED WHAT THEY DO NOT WANT. 




F one will take the trouble to watch his own 
mind, or — which he will find to be a great 
deal more natural — to watch the cond ict 
. of his neighbors, he will observe how readily 
men listening to discourse believe more firmly what 
they believed before, and allow themselves to be influ- 
enced in the very qualities which are already strongest 
and most active. 

Men love to read " on their own side," to hear 
the things which they already believe enforced with 
new arguments ; to hear their ministers or political 
speakers praise the things in which already they 
are fully established. But they are seldom willing 
to hear another side, to have enforced the truths 
which they do not believe, and the qualities which 
they do not possess. In this way men grow narrow : 
they intensify their opinions, rather than enlarge 
their knowledge, and become selfish and bigoted. 

If I were to urge the benefits of an easy and good- 
natured contentment in life, the anxious and the 
careful would shake their heads, and fear that these 
qualities would lead to carelessness and mischief, 
^hereas, all the heedless and jovial, who live for one 
day at a time, and never provide for to-morrow, 
would jump at the doctrine and rejoice in its wisdom. 
But those who refuse it are most in need of it, and 
those who accept it do not need it at all. 

If I urge the claims of sobriety and foresight, those 
who are already too anxious about the future, and 



162 EYES AND EARS. 

too sober for the present, will listen eagerly and nod 
approval, and talk all the way home of the wisdom 
of my speech. But it was not for their sakes that 
this truth was propounded, but for the careless, gig- 
gling, heedless creatures who take none of it to them- 
selves. If I praise generosity, they who are already 
carelessly generous receive a fresh impulse in that 
direction. If I exhort to frugality and economy, all 
the shrewd and close-managing men in the congrega- 
tion repeat the words, and nudge their neighbors, 
and look around exulting. But if I sharply expose 
the meanness of being penurious and stingy, all the 
parsimonious men are deaf, while the spendthrifts 
fairly laugh out with approbation. 

When I inveigh against pride, the proud are the 
last that take it; but if I expound the benefits of a 
firm self-reliance and self-respect, all those already 
too strong in self-esteem straighten up, and say, 
Amen ! 

Men strengthen each other in their faults. Those 
who are alike associate together, repeat the things 
which all believe, defend and stimulate their com- 
mon faults of disposition, and each one receive? 
from the others a reflection of his own egotism. If 
the slow and prudent would associate with the san- 
guine and zealous, the peculiar faults of each would 
be mutually corrective. If the timid and the cour- 
ageous would walk together, one would rise toward 
firmness and the other sink a little back from rash- 
ness. Men of a practical mind, who regard the im- 
agination with contempt, are just the men that ought 
to associate with imaginative people, and clothe their 
barrenness with some beauty, and gain that finer 



MEN NEED WHAT THEY DO NOT WANT. 163 

insight which the imagination gives to the under- 
standing. 

People naturally select those companions who please 
rather than those who profit them most, and gratify 
their conceit at the expense of improvement. 

There is manifest a wisdom in the divine order of 
society ; men are thrown together without regard to 
their affinities and preferences. The old and young, 
the gay and sober, the thriftless and frugal, the selfish 
and generous, the poor and the rich, the high and 
the low, all dispositions, all pursuits, all sides of belief 
of all sorts, secular things and religious, authority 
and lawlessness, knowledge and ignorance, riches and 
poverty, cheerfulness and gloom, hopefulness and 
despondency, the nimble and the sluggish, the quick- 
seeing and the dull-eyed, — all are thrown together 
into the vast compound of human society, and made 
by their interests to defer one to another, to wait 
upon each other, to give up their own preferences, to 
respect in others traits which they do not themselves 
possess. And so the Divine Wisdom has made hu- 
man life to be a school and educatory discipline. 
And we are not to regard it as our misfortune that 
we must mix with men and feel all their humors, and 
carry some part of their follies as burdens. No 
schoolmaster could teach men as much wisdom as 
those things do which men count it a misfortune to 
meet or to endure ! And all the dreams and aspira- 
tions which men entertain, of retiring from society, 
of getting out from life into some secluded nook, 
are not only unwise, but contrary to the ordinance 
of Divine Providence. For men need men. And 
while it is pleasanter to meet men whose likeness 



164 



EYES AND EARS. 



to ourselves shall flatter our vanity or pride, it is 
better to be obliged to associate with those who will 
teach us new things, or even with those whose very 
faults will induce patience, forbearance, and philan- 
thropy. 




CONSULTING AN ECHO. 

VERY self-willed and passionate man there 
was, in our boyhood days, who had long and 
loud disputes, sometimes with his wife and 
sometimes with his neighbors. Of course 
he was always in the right, and they, whoever they 
might be, were always in the wrong. It chanced that 
there was in his neighborhood a place remarkable for 
its echo. One echo was always to be had, and in cer- 
tain positions, two and three. The vehement old gen- 
tleman used, when the dispute did not please him, to 
walk off in the direction of the echo-hills, talking to 
himself, and at every step more and more positively 
laying down his propositions, until, by the time he 
reached the ground, he would shout out, " I know I 
am right!" and immediately it was sent back to him, 

— " Know am right ! " — " Am right ! " — " Right 1 " 
" I say she lies ! " he would cry out, encouraged with 
the first effort ; and the echo replied, " Say she lies," 

— " She lies," — " Lies ! " Catching up the hint, he 
would answer, — " Well, I do say so." And he was 
gratified with hearing, " Do say so," — " Say so." 

This walk became a great consolation to the prag- 
matical old man. And he seemed, at length, to think 



CONSULimG AN ECHO. 165 

that there was wafted to him some intelligent con- 
firmation of his notions. Thus he was wont to hear 
himself, and listen to his own words reflected from 
the sides of the hill. 

There are a great many persons of strong nature, 
inflexible will, self-opinionated, and intense in feeling, 
who never see anything in life, except themselves 
reflected from those whom they meet. It is not their 
wish to be advised, or to be modified in their notions. 
They give forth their own intense convictions, and 
pour forth their feelings out upon things and persons 
to sTich a degree, that everything is but a reflection of 
themselves. 

Such persons will bear down upon men, in asking 
their opinions, with such a statement of their own, 
that timid and complying natures say yes to them, of 
course ; and those who wish to please, or do not wish 
to offend, say yes, too. And those who say nothing 
are considered, of course, as giving tacit assent. And 
sensible men, of contrary opinions, would no more 
think of resisting them, than they would of catcliing a 
wild horse that ran with headlong fury through the 
streets. But how satisfied is he, after such a career ! 
Rubbing his hands, he says, with lordly satisfaction, 
" I have asked a great many sensible people about 
this matter, and I have yet to find one who does not 
think as I do." The fact is, that he has been out 
hallooing and listening to his own echo 1 

If a man is prosperous and influential, there are 
multitudes who only desire to know what he would 
like to have advised. It is not always easy to get 
another's real mind. They stand off, they hesitate 
and question as if to get at the truth, whereas they 



166 EYES AND EARS. 

are only getting at you. So soon as your bent and 
wish are discovered, they will, with great apparent 
candor, advise you just as you longed to have them ! 
and you have got yourself twice over, — your own 
mind and its echo ! 

It is amusing to listen to a dozen gentlemen at a 
prlitical consultation, or at a board of directors for 
some institution, or of a railroad company, upon a 
question which divides and excites all the number. 
Each of at least half a dozen men will assure you that 
he has not yet met a single man who does not think 
as he does. At least two or three irreconcilable 
opinions will be declared to be tlie current opinion 
of the community ! Each man goes to those natu- 
rally accessible to himself, and hears himself reflected 
from them, and reports to his confederates one 
opinion, and that his own, echoed five or six times! 
Men usually find what they wish to find. What they 
look for, that they see. 

Let a pretty woman, of agreeable manners, and 
musical way of talking, who is greatly exercised with 
some profound question of a Fair or Festival, and who 
leads the " Opposition," go among the admiring gen- 
tlemen who are her friends, and see if she does not 
come back in triumph to report that every one agreed 
with her ! - 

Let some amiable pastor go out to see what his 
people think about his remaining with them, and we 
will venture to say that he will be almost unani- 
mously fooled into the impression that every man in 
the parish wishes him to stay as much as he himself 
does ! Consultation, with obstinate men, is only an- 
other way of propagating their own opinions. 



THE VIRTUE AND FANATICISM OF NEATNESS. 167 

The same thing takes place in public assemblies. 
Men who speak to temperance meetings are expected 
to say what the meeting already believes ; the Dem- 
ocratic or Republican speaker is the echo of the 
audience, with variations ; that preacher is sound, 
with his own people, who eloquently varies and 
embellishes their own beliefs. 

Every considerate man should be aware of this 
subtle echo of selfishness or conceit. And a wise 
man should eagerly entertain those counsellings 
which are the least like his own. It is what others 
think that we need to ponder. Conceit is narrow. 
No man can be very broad who will build with 
nothing but that which he quarries from himself. 
There are men enough who think, when they hear 
themselves echoed, that a god spoke.- 



THE VIRTUE AND FANATICISM OF NEATNESS. 




T has been said that poetry must be a birth- 
right. It cannot spring from education 
merely. We are sure that the same is yet 
more eminently true of neatness ! A man 
must have an original genius for it, or he will not 
excel. We have good reasons for saying so. We 
admire pictures, without being able to paint them, 
and we admire neatness in the same way. We have 
a sort of reverence for a comprehensively neat and 
orderly person, as of a being of superior endowments. 
We could never gain an insight into that rare and 



168 EYES AND EARS. 

wonderful mental mechanism by wliicli everything is 
made to arrange itself without commotion, and things 
come to pass neatly. It is a matter of genius un- 
doubtedly. Education may develop it, direct it, but 
never creates it. All the education in the world 
could not enable us to fold a shirt so that it would 
come forth with the creases in the right place. We 
can roll up a bundle, we can tumble up a garment, 
we can crowd into very narrow compass any amount 
of linen. But when it comes forth again, who can 
describe its condition ? But another hand is put 
forth. Every thread knows its master. Each plait 
and every fold submit themselves. Creases vanish 
in despair. And a heterogeneous heap comes quietly 
into order and contact, so that a trunk is packed 
with as much harmony as are the muscles and tis- 
sues of the human body. 

Then there is the mystery of bureau-drawers. We 
never put anything into them that it does not seem 
to shove everything else. We never take anything 
out, without discomposing all that remains. There 
is a fatality of disorder in our touch. But another- 
soothes the drawer, brings peace to linen, and com- 
posure to ruffled handkerchiefs and heterogeneous 
stockings. If we hang up anything in the closet, it 
is sure to fall down again. If we want a coat, it is 
sure to be under two or three other garments, which 
always get out of the way in any but the right way. 
Our boots and shoes take every liberty with us, and 
despise regularity in arrangement. Indeed, our visit 
to any place is a sure indication that the place needs 
some attention. But if these easy things are difficult, 
what shall be said of books, of papers, of letters, of 



TilE VIRTUE AND FANATICISM OF NEATNESS. 169 

engravings, of pictures, and of all the multitude of 
nameless things that make up a collector's cabinet? 
Who can describe a gentleman's house when his fam- 
ily is away ? ^ooks accumulate on the floor ; papers 
load down the table ; pitchers, tumblers, plates, blink 
from among statuettes and vases on the mantelpiece ; 
framed engravings and pictures are stacked against 
the wall six or seven deep ; portfolios spread abroad 
their huge sides flat upon the floor ; shawls and dress- 
ing-gowns are tucked upon the sofa ; hats, caps, 
gloves, and shoes are promiscuous and diffusive ; 
heaps of everything abound everywhere. There is a 
place for everything, and everything is in its place, 
and that place is — the floor. The ashes are forgot- 
ten and protrude far beyond decency and the fender ; 
canes and fishing-rods confer together in the corner, 
and cups and balls roll and jingle in every drawer. 
All the tumblers in the house have been used for 
flowers, and all the pitchers have been brought up 
with water. And yet the man loves order, and no 
one has a keener sense of gratitude when the restor- 
ing hand at last arrives, and all things, as if conscious 
of a new influence, begin their march to their own 
domain. 

But order and neatness are different things. A 
man may be forgiven for disorder, but not for dirti- 
ness, and especially if it be personal. There are 
many persons scrupulously neat who are not orderly, 
and sometimes we find a man who is orderly but not 
neat ; but generally neatness and order are twin sis- 
ters. And how beautiful ! 

We can pity and forgive the want of these qualities 
in man, but not in woman. All virtues and graces go 
« ■ 



170 EYES AND EARS. 

for nothing in a slattern. A woman must be super- 
human, indeed angelic, who could please without neat- 
ness. Probably the conviction of this truth accounts 
for the universal grace of neatness among women. 
Tliere are occasional rumors of a contrary state of 
things. But we always tread them under foot indig- 
nantly as wanton slanders. Women are neat. If 
not, they are not women. 

Nay. Women are in danger of excess in careful- 
ness. They run into radical notions of order, and 
even flame forth into fanaticisms of neatness. Then 
neatness becomes most afflictive. It has long been a 
question with me, which was most dreadful, a disor- 
derly house, or a dwelling given up to the insanity of 
neatness. In the sacred precinct of that dwelling 
where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce 
neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his 
hands. Order is the centre, and neatness the su- 
preme law, of the house. Nothing is pardonable, 
nothing tolerated which does not nimbly and abjectly 
bow down to them. Sin and dirt are synonymous. 
"Vain are Lesson and Catechism without precision and 
absolute neatness. All the instruments of this final 
quality become reverend. A child that would speak 
slightingly of broom, brush, or towel, is on the road 
to profanity! All moral qualities are inflections or 
subordinates of the supreme virtue of cleanly order. 
Men are divided into two classes, the neat and the 
filthy. The grades of respectability and the order 
of endowment are aU measured by the relative 
capacity for neatness ! Everything comes under this 
Moral Law. The horse must be neat, the cow must 
be neat, the dog must be neat, the pigs must be neat ! 



THE VIKTUE AND FANATICISM OF NEATNESS. 171 

From cellar to attic there is the most fierce and vigi- 
lant hunt for the germ of dirt. There must not only 
be no spot, or soil, or litter, but not even the sus- 
picion of any ! What avail all virtues, all graces of 
speech, all helpful kindness, if, when the matron 
lays her head on the pillow, there is a probable 
shaving on the nursery floor, an undusted chair, or 
a bit of lint right out on the parlor carpet ? 

Common, ignorant folks have but a slight idea of 
neatness as a science. It is with many people of a 
neglected education a mere superficial quality. Have 
they ever classified the different kinds of dirt? traced 
them to their sources ? and studied their habits ? Do 
they even know that there is a Natural History of 
Dirt ? There is mould, rust, mildew, dust, smoke- 
grime ; dirt of wood, of woollen, of cotton, of fruit 
and vegetable, of paper, of leaves, of insects, of birds 
and beasts, of men and children, solid, liquid, gaseous, 
aerial, terraqueous, visible and invisible. There is 
the dirt of the crack, of the crack vertical and the 
crack horizontal, of the moulding and cornice, of the 
wall and ceiling, of the curtain and carpet, of -cup- 
board and closet, of table and bed, of seasons. Each 
in kind, winter dirt, spring, summer, and autumn 
dirts, and each to be searched, seized, condemned, 
and annihilated. 

The housewife becomes a knight-errant. Ghosts 
and giants are nothing to her. Castles and en- 
counters of freebooters she turns over to nursery 
credulity. She has her broom and brush in hand, 
her armature of cloth and wash, for that deceitful, 
stealthy, ubiquitous foe of all domestic peace, uni- 
versal dirt. All nature is her enemy. All winds 



172 EYES AND EARS. 

are adverse which bring dust. All phenomena are 
regarded as good or bad, from their dirt-producing 
tendencies. The economy of life is arranged with 
supreme reference to virtues of order and neatness. 
Comfort is nothing, ease is nothing, happiness is 
nothing, good dispositions are nothing. Neatness is 
the one grace. That determines when you must get 
up, what you must wear, where you may sit down, 
what you may touch, what rooms are usable, what 
days of the week are home days, or endurable days. 
Life has not one moment's respite from unwinking 
vigilance ! Not one moment is there that the great 
Arch-enemy of connubial felicity does not threaten a 
speck or a spot vipon something. You live under a 
perpetual and sounding, " Take care." It is " Take 
care, don't touch that silver, you will tarnish it." 
" Take care of that sofa, it is newly covered." 
" Take care-! don't sit on that clean chintz ; you 
ought to know better than to sit down on such a 
chair ! " " Take care ! let that hat alone, you will 
soil it." " Take care ! pray don't go near that side- 
board, you '11 scratch it." " Take care ! a stick ! a 
knife too ! ! Whittling in the parlor ! ! ! Go out — 
out with you ; go out of the yard, go into the road ; 
go behind the barn, where the wind won't blow your 
shavings back." " Take care ! don't eat apples in 
the sitting-room, — you always drop some seeds." 
" Take care, child, come away from that door. You 
are not going into that- room ; it is just put in 
order I " And thus, family discipline, domestic life, 
and the whole end of living seems to be, to avoid 
dirt, and secure neatness. Is there anything so tor- 
menting as ecstatic neatness ? 0, for a morsel of dirt, 



NIAGARA FALLS, BUT NOT DESCRIBED. 173 

as a luxury ! How good dust looks ! A ploughed field 
with endless dirt, — all hail I The great sentence 
itself, which consigns man finally to dust again, be- 
comes a consolation ! 




NIAGARA FALLS, BUT NOT DESCRIBED. 

NY attempt to convey to those who have not 
seen them " a realizing idea " of Niagara 
Falls, must be a miserable failure, even 
wlien the description is calm, detailed, and 
scientific ; and much more when it is exclamatory and 
poetic. But, after one has himself been at the Falls, 
and subject to their influence, all reasonably well-writ- 
ten descriptions become interesting. One cannot but 
wish to know how other minds have been affected, and 
what were the secret reasons of different experiences. 
With some most literal persons the whole concern may 
be expressed in arithmetical figures ; — the American 
falls are so high and so wide ; the Canada falls are so 
much wider and so much lower ; the water is so deep, 
and so many tons are estimated to pass over in an 
hour; the rapids descend at such an angle, and so 
many feet. There is to them neither more nor less 
than just what is before them, — a vast, roaring 
plunge of water. To another, we may suppose there 
is added a fine perception of form, color, and motion. 
He will have an artist's eye for each feature, — as if 
he were turning in his mind unconsciously the anat- 
omy of the thing, and revolving how it could be ren- 
dered on canvas. 



174 EYES AND EAES. 

But to others, while this may not be wanting, there 
is a very different class of mental sensations. After 
the first bewildering excitement begins to assume a 
more settled form, and the confused and multiplex 
conceptions grow up each upon its own stem, one is 
conscious, at least I was conscious, that I did not so 
much see simply the Falls, as, seeing them, feel thou- 
sands of associations which they touched and vivified. 
And it seems that, besides their wondrous quality of 
beauty and force and grandeur, they have a yet more 
wonderful power of suggestion. Thus, while I was 
steadily gazing at these perpendicular waves, and 
thought that I was really seeing them, the mind had 
glanced back, and was experiencing a strange sense 
of the length of years, and unending, unintermitted 
work. For ages before an eye saw them, long before 
even an Indian wandered toward their mysterious 
thunder, — while Columbus was steering westward, 
while battles were destroying Rome, while Romans 
were sacking Jerusalem, while Israel wandered in 
captive lands, while David was penning in his psalm, 
" The voice of the Lord is upon the waters : the God 
of glory thundereth : the Lord is upon many waters. 
The voice of the Lord is powerful ; the voice of the 
Lord is full of majesty. The Lord sitteth upon the 
flood, the Lord sitteth King forever," — these mighty 
Falls were making their solemn chorus. And not for 
one moment has there been check or pause. It seems 
to one, at first, as if they wrought for him : as if, when 
he departed, they must fade out somewhat as they do 
in his remembrance. And it comes with great power 
home to us, that they have thundered for ages, neither 
caring whether men heard or were deaf or absent, in 



NIAGARA FALLS, BUT NOT DESCRIBED. 175 

winter and summer, amid storms or sunshines, dark or 
light, under the stars and under the sun. Our own 
emotions seem to be a. part of the scene. That there 
should have been such long space in which no one 
shuddered or laughed, no one was solemn or glad, no 
one looked or lingered or yearned, while yet all this 
upheaved glory was active still, makes one feel what 
the unworthy disciple said, " Why was this waste ? " 
It is like a drama enacted in a solitary theatre ; a ser- 
mon discoursed unto emptiness. Then one wonders 
what the sensations musts have been of the millions 
of diverse minds that have thronged these banks, in 
all degrees of capacity and sensibility, in all moods 
of sobriety and sorrow, in all experiences of gayety 
and joy, — young and old, wise men and fools, gig- 
gling girls for once hushed and overawed, before this 
stern and uncoquetting beauty that would as remorse- 
lessly swallow down babe and beauty as it would bear 
or log. Could the simple and natural experiences of 
all the souls which have been wrought upon before 
this Majesty of Waters be vividly recorded, it would 
be yet more wonderful than Niagara itself. 

One is not long in discovering that he is seeking 
to express that which he sees by comparisons with 
familiar objects. I cannot till this moment, when 
looking upon the bubbling-out of jets of white from 
the face of the descending water, forbear to think 
that it is a process of blossoming. This takes place 
peculiarly upon the Canada side. The water at the 
centre angle comes to the plunge with unbroken sur- 
face, — a massive movement, a solemn dignity, as if 
conscious of the secret power which slept within. 
It bends without a wrinkle ; it plunges ; but, at less 



176 EYES AND EARS. 

than a third of its descent, some projecting crag from 
beneath catches it, or the air hisses up through it, 
and white ebullitions evolve, growing more and more 
frequent, until, before the mass is hid in the mists 
which gather about its feet, it is sheeted all over with 
flowers. This is not a suggestion merely of color, 
but of motion. The evolution of these diamond bou- 
quets is suggestive of the rapid opening of leaves, of 
the quick, final opening of flower-buds. Neither can 
one, by any process of reasoning, get rid of a sense 
of life in this cataract. It is felt in the Rapids above, 
in the long-descending Fall, in the infuriate and ago- 
nized uproar beneath the Horse-Shoe, and, perhaps 
even more than anywhere, in the race beneath and 
beyond the suspension-bridge, two miles below. You 
do not at all admit that you are so wrought upon in 
your inmost soul by a mere mass of inert water 
drawn down the cliff by gravitation. It must be a 
living voice that speaks to you. You attribute voli- 
tion to it. No one thinks or speaks of it as a passive 
thing, irresistibly acted on ; but as a fierce will, as 
an irresistible power, full of all caprices, of inordi- 
nate passions, surpassing in rage and fury and ter- 
rible strife all that we have conceived of in human 
conflicts, or the race of contending beasts, or the 
coil and twist of mightiest serpents. This sense of 
life grows more earnest and real the nearer you 
come to the water. At a little distance the sense of 
beauty takes precedence of all others ; but stand at 
the foot of either sheet, or close upon the edge of 
Table Rock, or, more remarkably yet, descend beneath 
Table Rock, and, turning to the left a hundred yards, 
go down and out to the very edge of the stream, 



NIAGARA FALLS, BUT NOT DESCRIBED. 177 

that, having made its leap, is hissing past in wild 
affright and immeasurable speed, and you will have 
a brave heart indeed or a very stupid one, if you do 
not feel as if you were looking in upon a chasm of 
perdition, and were in momentary danger of being 
clutched by weird spirits and hurried headlong to 
destruction. No one can look out over this particular 
scene, from the edge of it, without an impression of 
subterranean and infernal doings. At one moment, 
the innumerable jets, that never for two seconds wear 
the same form, — that are not water nor foam, but 
both, — that open and stretch out long hands, leaping 
up as if clutching at some invisible prey, and then 
rush together, and whirl round and round in a maze 
of fury, — suggest to you a liquid prairie full of raging 
and bedevilled water-wolves. If the eye changes a 
little, looks farther up towards the opening and shut- 
ting mist, it fancies that there are monsters beneath 
in horrible sport. Tlie water swells up as if they 
were about to emerge, or bubbles and boils after them 
as they sink down again. You look for the serrated 
and knotted black back, you almost can see the huge 
sprawling legs and tentaculae of the fabulous Nor- 
wegian Krakens, acre-large, sporting with all their 
young litter. There is one point where, above all 
others, you have a sense of power in a threefold 
form ; going beneath Table Rock, as far as you can, 
without going behind the sheet, you see the force with 
which the water descends. It is not a steady pouring, 
but in successive bolts ; it has the appearance of 
clenched fists, pelting downward toward the rocks. 
Behind this is the gloomy and mysterious mouth of 
the cave, swept across by violently blown mists. TliQ 

8* u 



178 EYES AND EARS. 

wild eddying of these vapors was to me very impres- 
sive. I looked to see some storm-god issue forth, and 
tliese were his whirling couriers speeding out before 
him. Just below, an eddy swept round a point of 
rock, forming a whirlpool, some fifty or sixty feet in 
diameter. Into this had been sucked several trunks 
of trees, logs, planks, besides lesser trash. It was 
affecting to look at their attempts to escape. For 
surely they were alive, and conscious of their danger, 
and wildly heading out toward the raging waters, 
which mounted them, beat them down, whirled them 
back, and sent them round again in the endless circle. 
And so I watched them for a half-hour, and longed to 
do something to help them, — for it was plain that 
they could not help themselves. Doubtless they are 
whirling there yet, as I write ; and yet, as you read. 
Nor could one of my profession refrain from tliinking 
tliat thus stray men, swept by their passions, are 
caught and whirled nightly round and round, by cur- 
rents that are easily entered, but that defy all escape, 
until their work is done, and they cast the mangled 
victim in fragments all along the shore ! 

One that had not seen could hardly be persuaded 
that over all these views there is spread the most 
dazzling and exquisite beauty. The very stream that 
ruslies like a raging demon at you, and splits upon 
the rock on which you sit, is beaded all over with 
sparkling bubbles, that, every one, might teach a dia- 
mond liow to shine. Those globes that belly up from 
the deep are sheaves of pearls ; those wildest circles 
that shoot out like suddenly uncoiled serpents, give 
you every curve of beauty, and are white with efflo- 
rescent gems. The mind changes with perpetual and 



NIAGARA FALLS, BUT NOT DESCRIBED. 179 

involuntaiy transitions from terror to admiration ; 
from terrible power to exquisite loveliness. It is a 
scene of raging power covered all over with a robe of 
perfect beauty. The mists assume every form ; rising 
as a stately pillar, or swept by the winds and diffused 
like clouds. Meantime the whole air is solemn with 
the undertone of the falls. The most obvious sound 
is a sharp and crashy roar. But down below, there is 
a suppressed thunder, as of an organ playing beneath 
the uplifted song of a thousand voices. 

The sense of irresistible power is common to every 
part of this scene, when approached closely. The 
tumult and headlong rush of the Rapids, whirling, 
tumbling over each other, one wave devouring an- 
other, — the stately plunge of the solemn green water, 
the boiling and madness of the tormented chasm 
below, with very different effects in other respects, 
have all alike a sense of irresistible power that 
makes your own strength insignificant. You are the 
most helpless of all creatures. A gnat, a spider, a 
leaf, have as much power to resist as you. A 
struggle would be a folly. Even an outcry would 
be as if you were dumb. Such utter nothingness, 
before a presence upon which the hand of man can 
never be lifted, is a kind of annihilation. Courage, 
resistance, strength, contention, are words without 
any meaning to a man who steps three feet farther 
out beyond where I stand. 

But different portions of this system of falls, — for 
it is not one fall, but an elaborate cataract system, — 
have very different expressions of feeling. Seen from 
a distance, as from Terrapin Bridge and the tower on 
Goat Island, the Rapids are not victim waves, hurried 



180 EYES AND EARS. 

to execution, but they come down toward you with 
all tokens of joy, flinging up their arms, and rushing 
with an ecstasy of exhilaration, a very carnival of 
waters. Sometimes one thinks, when looking far up 
to the upper line of the Rapids, where they back 
against the sky, of a troop of bannered knights, filling 
the air with white pennons and streamers, and charg- 
ing down toward you, and every few moments some 
larger swell, like a suddenly spurred steed, bolts up- 
right and above all its fellows. At other times, when 
in positions that bring the sun aright, it seems as if, 
from below, water-sprites were ostentatious of their 
jewels, and flinging them by millions to glitter a 
moment in the sun, and then flash back to the wave 
again. 

All hasty visitors, and almost all who think them- 
selves thoroughly acquainted with the Falls, miss the 
only view of the Rapids which, once seen, one wishes 
to carry away in his memory, and tliat is on the 
Canada side, about two miles from the .Clifton House, 
on the Chippewa road, at a place called Street's Mill. 
As compared with this, all other views of the Rapids 
are fragmentary. This one, at that particular point, 
gives them in such perspective, that they seem to 
stretch away ten miles, although not in fact half a 
mile wide. If one, on returning, looks from the hill, 
back upon the scene which he has just been viewing, 
he can scarcely be persuaded that the few strips of 
/oam which he sees could have seemed so immensely 
outstretched. It is the most gloriously deceptive view 
around the Falls. 




NEAT DRESSING IS NOT CLEAN HOUSEKEEPING. 181 



NEAT DRESSING IS NOT CLEAN HOUSEKEEPING. 

AYING often met Mrs. Prim in society, I 
thought her the neatest woman in the 
world ; and probably should have always 
thought so if I had not, very strangely, had 
access to her house. For, once, when I had praised 
the good woman, a mischievous girl whispered just 
loud enough to be heard, (exactly as if she was trying 
to keep it a secret, — cunning rogue !) " He ought to 
see her at home, if he wants to know what neatness 
is." This ran in my head, and stirred up a liost of 
busy fancies and wondenng thoughts. " Well, I do 
wish I could slip in some time, unexpectedly, and see 
if this fair show is a pretty piece of domestic impos- 
ture ! " . 

Who knows what is before him ? My wishes were 
gratified. For, that very night, I dreamed ; and Mrs. 
Prim was the heroine of my dream. By that amazing 
power given unto dreams, I found myself the husband 
of Mrs. Prim, — tlie very Mr. Prim himself. Methought 
my lady had gone out to spend an evening ; and afier 
sleepily reading a paper for a while, I retired to rest. 
Entering the room, there lay a stocking sprawled out 
at full length on the floor, its mate coiled up into a 
dump by its side, just as it was turned off the foot. 
In the middle of the room stood a stack of vmder- 
clothes, just as they had been stepped out of. Several 
pairs of shoes and several widowed ones, who long liad 
mourned the loss of a companion, and had, for grief 
doubtless, much run down at the heel, were sprinkled 



182 EYES AND EARS. 

around the room promiscuously. The washbasin, its 
contents creamed over with soap, stood in a chair ; the 
towel lying half in it, the soap on the floor with a coat 
of dust be-feathering it. The washstand was covered 
with ends of candles, open and evacuated snuffers, 
scraps of fancy soap, a caseknife, a roll of brimstone, 
two tooth-brushes colored with powder, the one red, 
the other black ; a shoebrush, a snarl of black braid for 
shoestrings, half a dozen empty perfume-bottles, and 
a -Bible. The bureau was as much beyond the wash- 
stand in condition as in original size. Every drawer 
but one was open in different degrees, like Peel's slid- 
ing-scale of tariff. If Homer asked help of the gods 
when beginning his epic, how much more should I ? 
He had only a city to describe, with a few armies, and 
the geography of earth and heaven ; but I have a lady's 
bureau and all its drawers ! The clotli, designed to 
cover and protect it from all scratches, had certainly 
been used for a towel at each corner, for there were the 
finger-prints. A pair of curls, several unmanufactured 
wads of vagrant hair, an upset box of tooth-powder, 
two dispersed squadrons of pins, — the one sort mere 
light infantry, the other full-grown dragoon pins, — 
hair-brushes, one, two, three ; two long combs, one 
fine comb, so old as to have lost many of its teeth, and 
to have turned quite gray ; pomatum, oils, uncorked 
cologne^ mille-fleur^ lavender^ patchouli^ verveine, and 
a host besides ; wristlets, hair-bands, ruffles, laces, lock- 
ets, rings, thimbles, elongated hair-pins, side-combs, 
back-combs, refuse curl-papers, a pair of curling-tongs 
laid down too hot, and making the cloth to blush brown 
under them ; a bundle of tracts, several notes and bil- 
lets-doux, seals, wax, unrolled and unrolling spools of 



NEAT DRESSING IS NOT CLEAN HOUSEKEEPING. 183 

thread, several skeins of silk snarled and unsnarlable, 
a crushed cap or two, sundry ribbons, an odd volume 
of Hannah More's works, the constitution of a ma- 
ternal society, gloves a score, black, white, yellow, 
blue, and brown, — and all this just on the top, for 
tlie drawers are yet to come ! A tempest had evi- 
dently been dealing with these lower depths, for they 
were stirred up from the bottom. When, in dressing 
in hot haste, a collar had been sought, tlie sweet Mrs. 
Prim, beginning at one side, forced down to the other 
end each article which was not the one sought for ; 
and then, returning, pawed them all down to the other 
side. Going to the next drawer, the ceremony was 
repeated. Some of the drawers were emptied into 
others ; and then the contents put back by the hand- 
ful and kneaded down to their proper compactness. 
Once, the candle — which was in a '' melting mood " 
— was overturned into a heap of fine linens, but the 
mischief was effaced by shoving the ill-fated things, 
in disgrace, far back into the drawer and deep under 
many companions. Many things were torn open to 
see if something else was not in them. Stockings 
were unrolled and left ; or a cotton and silk one 
rolled up together, a black one and a white. Thus 
much for the bureau ; but it is only a hint, and not a 
full description. My coats and overcoat, overhauled 
daily to see if 'a stray dress or underdress had not hid 
itself among them, were thus well-trained to ground 
and lofty tumbling ; and were becoming quite fledged 
with lint and feathers. 

Out of such a chaos Mrs. Prim would come forth 
the sweetest-looking creature and the best-dressed 
woman in town, when she was going into company I 



184 EYES AND EARS. 

How came she forth when only entering her own fam- 
ily ? With hair spreading in different directions, with 
a bestained and dirty dress, half hooked and half 
pinned with pins black and white, and with one of the 
backs of her dress an inch higher than the other ; the 
skirt ripped out of the gatherings in spots ; an apron 
tied on askew, ill-mated shoes, and no neck-handker- 
chief at all, — for, if the air is chilly when stepping out 
of doors, the apron is drawn around the neck. 0, 
what a waking was mine, when morning broke up the 
dream, and divorced me from Mrs. Prim ! Really, I 
do not suppose such a person ever lived or was thought 
of, except in a dream. If it ever ivere true, out of 
dreams, I do not think that husbands would respect 
their wives ; honeymoons would wane, men would not 
love their homes, things would go at sixes and sevens, 
young married couples would grow indifferent to each 
other, wives would complain that husbands did not care 
for them, husbands would mutter something about 
being " taken in," both would learn to say, " I re- 
member the time, Mr. Prim, when you would not have 
treated me so." " And I, Mrs. Prim, remember the 
time when you did not look so." " Well, my dear, 
whose fault is it, when I have nobody here at home 
half the time to care how I look ? " " Well, love, who 
wants to wade knee deep in dirt, and call that home ? " 
" Well, sir, you are a proper man to talk about dirt, 
you are so neat yourself ; pray, sir, do give me a lec- 
ture ; do show me how to keep things neat ; could n't 
you write a little book about it? it would be very 
nice, Mr. Prim ! — neat Mr. Prim ! ! — charming Mr. 
Prim!!!" 

But as such tilings never happen, there is no 
use in writing any more about them. 



OUR FIRST FISHING. 



185 



OUR FIRST FISHING. 




HERE is in the first experiences of life, the 
first hearty experiences of childhood, such 
a clear, full, and uncontrolled flow of pleas- 
ure, that we look back to them afterwards 
and wish, in later and riper life, that it were possible 
to have such simple and utter abandonment to our 
feelings. We go back to the scenes of childhood, and 
stand on the places that witnessed our early sports 
and joys, with an incredulous wonder. It seems more 
like a dream than a reality that we were once boys, 
capable of doing and being all that we remember. 

We suppose scarcely a single person knows the 
locality called " The Old Saw-Mill." It is on the 
river Bantam. Of course qyqyj one will know 
where that is. 

Well, that was a day above all days when we were 
permitted to go a-fishing all by ourselves ! Off we 
darted for the spade, and a ten-year-old boy might 
have been seen at work on the north side of the wood- 
house, where the kitchen sink-spout made the soil very 
rich, digging ^orms with the most glowing industry. 
Then, with a straight line right across lots, we aimed 
at the Old Saw- Mill. And not one step did we walk, 
and every step did we run, till the stony bank was 
reached. There lay the pools of water nearly two feet 
deep. And there, hidden under projecting stones, 
lurked the longed-for fish. An alder-pole was good 
enough in those days, a piece of twine was the line. 
Our hook was soon baited with a worm that wriggled 



186 EYES AND EARS. 

in a manner most deliciously tempting to any well- 
bred fish. With the most awful suspense we dropped 
the tempting morsel into the pool. Scarcely had it 
sunk to the flashing pebbles at the bottom, when a 
fish, that had evidently been made on purpose to de- 
light a boy's heart, darted out, and seized the hook 
with sucli a pull as sent the blood through every vein 
in my body. The energy with which that fish came 
forth was such as to settle all question of cruelty. For 
such a violent jerk did we give, that the little fellow 
described a circle over our head, and was thwacked 
against the rocks with such force as to be dashed to 
atoms ! But we had caught a fish ! The thing was 
settled ! A fish could be caught, and we could catch 
it. But a second and third endeavor resulted in the 
same way. The fish were shiners. They were as 
large as a man's finger, almost. And, when we 
went home at length, at least half that we caught 
had been dashed to pieces. How many times since 
then liave we seen the same thing done in life-expe- 
riences. Men are so eager that they destroy their 
own ends ! A parent is so roused up by a child's 
fault that he puts at him with such impetuosity that 
the boy is driven away from him, and refuses to be 
influenced. 

A friend, by gentle treatment, might have been led 
out of an error, but intemperate eagerness only sacri- 
fices him and his interests. If a man will have golden 
fish, let him go to the side of the stream of life calmly, 
put in his hook discreetly, and lift out his prey with 
an easy and even pull. But if he threshes back with 
full swing, ten to one lie will dash his luck to pieces ! 

You cannot succeed in life by spasmodic jerks. 



READING. 187 

You cannot win confidence, nor earn friendship, nor 
gain influence, nor attain skill, nor reach position 
by violent snatches. One sort of men lose by too 
much caution, another kind by too much eagerness. 
One waits too long, another does not wait long 
enough. 

First get your fish to bite. Then see that you so 
land them that they shall be worth something. 



READING. 




HERE are few who stop to consider the mira- 
cle of reading. That a few black marks upon 
paper should have such an informing and 
transporting power is scarcely less than mi- 
raculous. Four letters are put together, H, 0, M, E. 
The moment the eye looks upon them the soul rises 
lip, a picture comes forth ; a house with its yard, its 
barn, its well, its fields and forests. Even its most 
minute features come to us with exquisite nicety. 
We see its inmates, an old man, a venerable woman, 
children, domestic scenes. Years that have long 
slept rise up and step forth again in newness of life. 
And all things are so refashioned that we no longer 
think where we are, or what we are, but seem to our- 
selves carried back scores of years, and walking up 
and down again the ways of childhood. And all this 
simply because there are four linear spots of ink on 
a sheet of white paper ! 

But if one considers more minutely what is taking 



188 EYES AND EARS. 

place in reading all the time, the marvel will still 
grow. The eye has learned to see without pausing 
to examine. The ready reader never thinks of let- 
ters. It is only the ivord that he sees. And even 
the word seems to lose individuality, and is but a 
member of something else, — a sentence. But even 
the sentence seems not to be seen, but to be seen 
through. We see the thought rather than the sym- 
bol by which it is set forth. And the act of reading, 
although it is a physical act, is yet so mucli more 
mental, that we lose all consciousness of the mechani- 
cal part of it, and follow a train of pure tliought, or 
the flow of sentiment, or a description, as if the thing 
itself were transpiring ! It is most curious to watch 
a person in reading an exciting narrative, or some 
stirring appeal, and to see how these dead letters 
lord it over every inward faculty. At this black spot 
of printer's ink we weep, at another we laugh, at still 
another we are angry. This line touches one feel- 
ing, that line another, and line after line they reach 
in, and, like the fingers of a musician, touch the 
chords and bring forth all the soul's activity. 

But the same passage, read by different men, will 
affect them all differently. It is not probable that 
the same state of mind, in all its details, has ever 
been twice produced, exactly alike, by any text of 
Scripture or any passage in Shakespeare. Something 
is always varied. 

It is worthy of notice, that, although when we are 
heartily engaged in reading we cease to see the lines 
and letters, and behold only their meaning, yet, 
when we are absent-minded, we read without see- 
ing either the meaning or the words by which it is 



READING. 189 

conveyed. "We have, when much preoccupied, read 
whole pages aloud, to the edification of others, with- 
out being conscious either that we saw a letter or 
received a single idea. The eye saw, and the mouth 
vocalized, while our thoughts were busy with some 
memory, or in arranging some plan, or in some other 
variant activity. 

The habit of reading proof and correcting it for 
press leads to some singular developments. A man 
feels mistakes rather than sees them. In glancing 
rapidly over the sentences, almost before the will can 
act, and while the thought is tending to hold its way 
right along, we feel a sort of mechanical grip, a put- 
ting on the brakes, as if something was wrong, and 
we go back to search and see what it is. And, be- 
hold, there is a word with ie put for ei, or an m is 
wanting, or but one I is put where two should be ! 
That we did not see, but only felt the mistake, ap- 
pears from the fact that when we search we have not 
the least idea of what the matter is, and we go back 
looking and groping to see what it was that stopped 
us with such a mind-jolt ! 

Every one's reflection will suggest other facts in 
regard to the marvellousness of the simple mediani- 
cal and mental act of reading. But what to read, 
and hoio to read, are more important than the mar- 
vels of the simple act itself; and these topics must 
not be begun at the heels of an article. And so, if 
our readers will wait, we will too. 



190 EYES AND EARS. 



SUMMER READING. 




UMMER READING is a distinctly marked 
species in the great genus Reading. Every- 
body understands the term, but nobody 
can tell exactly what it means. There is 
a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious 
indolence and exacting work, and it is to this region, 
just between laziness and labor, that summer reading 
belongs. A book, that — lying upon your back, while 
the wind shakes the leaves in your drowsy ears, and 
insects fill the air with a sweet tenor, and bees under 
your window hum and drone, and birds return thanks 
for the seed and worms eaten — floats you up out of 
sleep, which yet throws its spray over you, as the 
sea does on men who lazily float in a summer breezy 
day on raft or low-edged boat, — a book that now 
and then drops you, and then takes you up again, 
that spins a silver thread of thought from your 
mind fine as gossamer, and then breaks it as the 
wind does the spider's web, — this is a summer book. 
You never know where you left off", and do not care 
where you begin. It is all beginning, and all middle, 
and end everywhere. 

Doubtless study has its dignities and claims ; stiff- 
backed, hard-seated study ^ — that makes no luxury of 
books, but quarries them, and digs or blasts material 
for solid uses. A man turns his mind round and 
round like an auger in some oaken plank, and bores 
through the toughest subjects. 

But venerable and praiseworthy as may be this long- 



SUMMEK BEADING. 191 

bearded industry and midnight-lamp wisdom, it must 
not hold a lighter thing in utter contempt. There is 
a reading for fugitive moments ; there is a luxury of 
reading when you are coiled up under a l3eech or elm 
tree around whose swollen roots a clear stream frolics 
that never goes to sleep, but plays in a perpetual 
childhood. I love clover-hay reading. Spread out 
on an ample mow, with the north and south barn- 
door wide open, with hens scratching down on the 
floor, and expressing themselves in short sentences 
to each other, now and then lifting up one of those 
roundelays or hen-songs that are no doubt as good 
to them as a psalm-tune or a love-song ; with swallows 
flying in and out, and clouds floating over the sun, 
raising or lowering the light on our book. Can any- 
thing be sweeter than such reading of poet, or story- 
weaving magician, or magister? Yes. It is even 
sweeter to have the letters grow dim, and run about 
the page, and disappear, while the hands relax, and 
the book, gently swaying, comes down on your breast, 
and visions from within open their clear faces on 
you, and the hours go by so softly that you will not 
believe that the sun is low in the west, and that 
those voices are of folks out after you to come in 
to supper !^ 

But there is a world of less indolent pleasure and 
of summer reading for cool mornings, for evening 
hours, and for the Sabbath, that never glows and 
rejoices with such fervor as in the country, in sum- 
mer days. We yield up the old ponderous books to 
the shelf again ; the histories, the controversies, the 
abstruse philosophies, the head-filling books of solid 
learning, and betake ourselves to books which teach 



192 EYES AND EAES. 

US of plants, of insects, of birds, of fish, of all things 
that live and grow, or fly or creep. The summer 
seems a prolonged invitation to read God's Book of 
Nature. 



WORTH OF MONEY. 




E hear a good deal about the worth of prop- 
erty. A house is worth ten thousand dol- 
lars ; that lot is worth fifty thousand dol- 
lars ; a farm is worth eight- thousand, a 
horse three hundred, a carriage five hundred, and so 
on endlessly. This is all very well in its way. But 
ought not the question, sometimes, to be put the other 
way, How much is a man's money worth ? There is a 
wider range in the value of money than most persons 
think. And, upon a little inquiry, I suspect that it 
will be found that all men who possess money, or who 
long to possess it, have a way of measuring it, not by 
dollars, but by its value in some sort of pleasure or 
article. 

One man earns a thousand dollars, and says to him- 
self. There, that puts me one step out of debt. Money 
to him is a means of personal liberty. A man in debt 
is not a freeman. " The borrower is servant to the 
lender." 

Another man sees in a thousand dollars a snug little 
homestead, a home for his children, a shelter to his 
old age, a place to live in, and a good place to die in. 
But his neighbor only sees one more link in the gold- 
en chain of wealth. It was thirty-nine thousand last 



WORTH OF MONEY. 193 

month, he is worth forty this. And his joy is in the 
growing numerals. He imagines how it will sound, 
full, round, and hearty, when men say, " He is worth 
a hundred thousand dollars." Nay, when it comes to 
that, he thinks five a better sound than one, and five 
hundred thousand dollars is a sound most musical to 
his ear, — though he loves even better yet to call it 
half a million ! That word million cuts a great swath 
in men's imaginations. All this estimate of money is 
sheer ambition. The man is vain. He thinks much 
of himself on account of money, not of character. A 
man who is openly proud of money is secretly con- 
temptuous of those who have none. 

Another man wishes to see the world. Every dol- 
lar means travel. A thousand dollars means Europe. 
Two thousand dollars means Egypt, Palestine, and 
Greece. 

Boys dealing in smaller sums reckon in the same 
way. A penny means a stick of candy ; sixpence is 
but another term for ball ; a shilling means a kite ; 
and fifty cents, a jack-knife. 

The young " Crack " sees in his money a skeleton 
wagon and a fast nag, a rousing trot, a jolly drink, 
and a smashing party. 

But many and many a weary soul sees in every shil- 
ling bread, rent, fuel, clothes. There be thousands 
who hold on to virtue by hands of dollars : a few more 
save them ; a few less, and they are lost. Their gayer 
sisters see feathered hats and royal silks in their money, 
or rather, in their fathers' and their husbands'. 

The poor scholar passes daily by the stall where 
books tempt his poverty. Poor clothes he is content 
to wear ; plain and even meagre diet he is willing to 

' 9 M 



194 EYES AND EAES. 

subsist upon ; and, as for all the gay dissipations and 
extravagant wastes of fashionable life, he looks upon 
them without even understanding what they mean, as 
a child looks upon the Milky-Way, in the heavens, a 
glowing band of far-away and unexplored wonders. 
But, those books ! He looks longingly at morning ; 
he peers at them with a gentle covetousness at night. 
He imagines new devices for earning a few dollars. 
He ponders whether there is not some new economy 
which can save a few shillings. And when good luck 
at last brings a score of dollars to him, with what fever 
of haste does he get rid of them, fairly running to the 
stall, and fearing, at every step, lest some fortunate 
man should have seized the prize. Wasteful man ! 
that night saw too much oil burnt out in poring over 
the joyful treasure. Books are what his money is 
worth ! But others see different visions. Money 
means flowers to them. New roses, the latest dahlia, 
the new camelia, or others of the great houri band of 
flowers that fill the florist's paradise, — the garden. 

Some men see engravings in money ; some, pic- 
tures ; some, rare copies of old books ; some, curious 
missals. Others, when you say money, think of fruit- 
trees, of shrubbery, of arboretums, pinetums, and fru- 
ticetums. And we have reason to believe that there 
are some poor wretches wlio, not content with any one 
insanity, see pretty much all these things by turns. 

But there are nobler sights than these to be seen 
through the golden lens of wealth : a father and 
mother placed in comfort in their old age ; a young 
man helped through college, or established in busi- 
ness ; a friend extricated from ruin ; a poor widow 
sayed from beggary, and made a suppliant bef va Gp^ 



PET NOTIONS. 195 

for mercies on your head, every day that she lives ; 
the sick and unfortunate succored, the orphan edu- 
cated, the school founded, the village lined with shade- 
trees, a free library established, and a thousand such 
like things. A man is not to be known by how much 
money he has, but by what that money is worth to 
him. If it is worth only selfishness, meanness, stingi- 
ness, vanity, and haughty state, a man is not rich if 
he own a million dollars. If it mean generosity, pub- 
lic spirit, social comfort, and refinement, then he is 
rich on a few hundred. You muSt put your hand 
into a man's heart to find out how much he is worth, 
not into his pocket. 



PET NOTIONS. 




HE old grammars, and for aught we know 
the new ones too, divide verbs into regular, 
irregular, and defective. This is the very 
division which we should apply to men ; 
only, instead of defective, we should say streaked, so 
that all men are divided into regular, irregular, and 
streaked. Of course, the first two include the moral 
elements, and the last is the term for all the whims, 
freaks, and eccentricities of men. When men are 
more remarkable for the things in which they differ 
from their fellow-men than for those in which they 
agree with them, they are eccentric. 

Every village and every neighborhood has its queer 
men, its drolls, and its oddities. But, besides these 



196 EYES AND EARS. 

streaked men, who do all things in a whimsical arid 
uncommon manner, it is amusing to see single pecu' 
liarities in men of the regular class. As cattle and 
horses, though of a uniform color, often have some 
single spot, a white spot in the face, or a white hoof, 
so men, almost all men, have some queer spot. Of- 
ten it is known only to their most intimate friends. 
Sometimes it works inwardly, and does not develop 
to observation until some trouble or great change in 
life lays it open. There are in old castles secret 
panel-doors, leading by hidden ways to concealed 
rooms, which the owner of the property keeps from 
the knowledge of all men, except some trusted ser- 
vant, or his oldest son. But revolutions, and the 
pillaging of his castle by unmannerly soldiery, some- 
times bring them to light. "And so is it with many 
a curious taste, prejudice, affection, caprice, or whim, 
sometimes worthy, and sometimes foolish. Indeed, 
we have known hard and rugged men, of a severe 
face and stern bearing, hiding away, as if ashamed 
of it, some delicate and tender feeling, soft arid 
sweet as a woman's. And when sickness or some 
sudden rending for a moment revealed the secret, 
they shrank from the disclosure almost as if it were 
a disgrace. 

In this class of streaks^ we have noticed none more 
common than that which leads men to be more vain 
of some quality quite aside from their profession, 
than of all the deserved and well-earned credit of 
their legitimate business. 

Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to say, that, of all 
his compositions, he was most proud of his composi- 
tions for making trees grow. The same is yet seen. 



PET NOTIONS. 197 

Webster, if his secret heart were known, was more 
vaiii of his sheep and cattle than of his speeches. 
While the whole world is talking of some poet, 
w^hose ethereal works would lead you to think that he 
seldom touched the earth, except as birds do, with 
delicate wing, you shall be surprised to find, at his 
table, that he is more sensitive about his wine than 
about his verses. His poetry is his business. He 
expects to do well in that. But wine is out of his 
line, and he makes a pet of his cellar. 

A merchant is envied by all his fellows for his 
clear-headedness, and his sagacious business opera- 
tions. But we dare say he will feel more compli- 
mented if you praise his horses than if you admire 
his commercial sagacity. A fine, hearty, manly 
friend, admirably qualified for solid business, thinks 
that he has a peculiar gift for music. He sits down 
every night at his much-complaining violoncello, and 
scrapes and sings till our ears are as hoarse as his 
throat. And a delicate compliment to his musical 
talent brings upon you a flood of sunshine from his 
honest face, and establishes your reputation for dis- 
cernment forever. Sometimes a merchant, making 
money easily, and just as easily keeping it, looks 
upon all his goods, property, and funds with discon- 
tent ; for he longs to be an orator ! He meditates 
speeches. At sundry little meetings he gives forth 
pet speeches. Ah, he tells you in a confidential hour, 
*'I would give all that I am worth if I could only 
think on my feet, and move an audience to my words, 
as I will." 

The old lawyer builds a country house, and lays out 
ten acres. That house of his own planning and those 



198 EYES AND EAES. 

acres are more to him than all his skill with courts 
and his reputation for legal learning. Thus it goes. 
If a man is an orator, he does not look for that, but 
longs to paint with artists ; while a successful painter 
is hankering after the laurels which are supposed to 
shade the brows of ready speakers. 

We have known men quite addicted to sewing and 
knitting. They hemmed towels with an earnestness 
betokening a proper regard for this useful accomplish- 
ment of sewing. Some men write long essays, never 
to be published, but often reviewed with fond pride. 
Discoveries are made in sacred literature, — new the- 
ories of prophecy, new renderings, and perverse learn- 
ing enough to set up a presbytery. Some men are 
always inventing, some tinkering, some building un- 
shapely furniture, which the wife soon stores in the 
garret. 

The deacon has a weakness for preaching ; and, as 
he cannot quite succeed, he puts a white cravat on, 
sleeks down his hair, and looks as if he would burst 
out into a sermon, if you only touched him. The 
blacksmith writes poetry. The butcher, having had 
bad luck in his trade, thinks he has gifts for medicine, 
and practises alternately in each department. 

And so the world goes. We are prone to under- 
value the things which we can do easily, and therefore 
well, and to pride ourselves upon trifles, although we 
do them poorly, because men are surprised that we 
can do them at all. 

These peculiarities are not simply amusing. They 
are a testimony, often, of a yearning after things more 
fine than belongs to a trade, more beautiful than every- 
day business furnishes, and purer and truer than many 



REASONS FOR NOT WRITING AN ARTICLE. 199 

of the experiences of every-day life. Sometimes they 
may be but vanities ; but it is charitable rather to 
imagine that they are irregular exhibitions of a long- 
ing in every one to be something more and better 
than he is. 




REASONS FOR NOT WRITING AN ARTICLE. 

R. BONNER: My dear Sir, — I write to say 
that circumstances make it impossible for 
me to send you an article this week, and to 
ask you to excuse me. The fact is, that I 
am so busy with both eyes and ears that I have no 
time to write. You must know that I am not in the 
city at this present writing, but some forty miles up 
in Westchester County. Perched up on a side-hill, 
whose slope toward the south is just enough for the 
utmost grace in lines, is a pre-revolutionary farm- 
house. The timber is of old oak, — of oak that has 
heard the British cannon from the ships of war in the 
Hudson River without quaking. It is a one-story 
house, so low-jointed that I can reach the ceiling with 
my hand. The snug rooms are all of a suitable small- 
ness, and, for summer, very cheerful. On the front, 
and running the whole length, are a piazza, a stoop, a 
portico, a veranda, a corridor, and a balcony, all in 
one. It is upon this said arrangement that I sit, and 
from this I must render a reason for not writing the 
article mentioned. 

In the first place, the birds make so much noise 
that I can hear nothing else, except the wind in the 



200 EYES AND EAKS. 

trees, the occasional lowing of cows, the barking of 
my nearest neighbor's dogs (two of which he is fatten- 
ing for the cattle-sliow) , the crowing of a few oratorical 
roosters in the distance, and now and then the laugh- 
ter of the men at work in the fields. This occupies 
my ears to a degree that unfits them for anything else. 

And, as for my eyes, it is even worse. The hills 
in this neighborhood are arranged in such a manner 
that one's eyes are perpetually diverted from sober 
reading to look at their graceful, green slopes, their 
endlessly varied lines, their waving grain. Then the 
distant Highlands draw off my attention, to their end- 
less diversities. Carved to every curve, their sides 
are scarped and grooved, ploughed and furrowed, 
until the whole view is a piece of gigantic engineer- 
ing, — not by art and device of man's hand, but by 
the patience of slow-working Nature. Clouds have 
done what no edge of iron or steel in the hands of a 
million workmen could have done. For these floating 
engineers, with the soft touch of liquid drops sent 
down upon the mountain-side, have hollowed out 
valleys, and cut the hills into every form of simple 
or fantastic beauty. No lever can move such rocks 
as a frozen bubble displaces. No tool can chisel upon 
such a scale as do edgeless showers. And centuries 
sit brooding plans of change, and behold, here are 
their works ! 

Now, just beneath these garnished hills is the Hud- 
son River. Every time I look at it I forget to look 
back upon my paper. It is not possible to write. 
Just now I had a thouglit. But ten sloops and 
schooners were just then flocking round the point 
in the river. I have always had an idea that North 



REASONS FOR NOT WRITING AN ARTICLE. 201 

E-iver sloops were coarse and ugly craft, fit only for 
carrying bricks and lumber. But no mistake was ever 
greater. They are express works of art. They were 
built and are navigated for their fine effect. Every 
villa on the Hudson is incomplete without these fleets 
of sloops, that hover in the distance like so many but- 
terflies sporting in the summer around the edge of 
roadside pools. Perhaps the crews, if there are any 
crews in such airy and graceful looking things, seen 
at this distance, think that they are carrying an inland 
trade. It may be that those near at hand can dis- 
cover rude and unshapely things about these craft. 
But to my eye, perched on my front stoop, all these 
white fairies of the river are merely floating past the 
green hills for picturesque effect. No man need try 
to persuade me that they carry hay, salt, stone, lime, 
bricks. The very appearance of them, from these 
hills, contradicts the supposition. 

There, now, just as I am getting ready to write 
again, up comes my neighbor to know about that 
stone-wall which bounds the maple-lined lane, by 
which, you know, we come up to this hundred-year- 
old farm-house. What do I know about stone-walls ? 
Fix it as it ou^ht to be fixed. That is plain enough. 
There are only two or three things required for a 
good stone-wall. It must be made so that chipmonks 
can run in and out easily ; it must have woodbine 
enough, in spots ; it must have a deal of mosses 
growing on it ; and it must be broad enough on the 
top for one to walk on. I know of nothing else 
which a good wall requires. 

Here comes a carpenter to ask about the kitchen 
which he is building in the rear of this venerable 



202 EYES AND EARS. 

It 

little dwelling aforesaid. But why am I to be dis- 
turbed by such things ? Build the kitchen if you 
please, sir, in such a way that the cook shall always 
be good-natured, that the bread shall always be light, 
sweet, and raised just to the point of saccharine fer- 
mentation, but not a bit beyond it ; for sour bread 
makes my temper sour. And also, Mr. Carpenter, 
please build the kitchen so that, if the cook be poor, 
somebody will always come and marry her off; and 
so that, if good, nobody can get her. With such 
directions, an ordinarily smart carpenter ought not 
to trouble me with questions. 

Now everybody is possessed ! Here is the mason, 
asking about the chimney ! Well, sir, about the 
chimney ; this is it. Build it so that it will never 
smoke ; so that it will draw just enough, and not a 
bit too much ; so that once in a while we can hear 
the storm-wind rumble in the flues ; so that in winter 
great logs can be burned in its fireplace, and all 
manner of dreamy pictures fall upon its fleecy ashes ; 
and, finally, build it so that cockroaches can't, and 
crickets can, run in and out of its crevices ! Stop 
a minute ! I want a brick oven, — none of your 
iron-cheeked stove-ovens will do for the country ! 
Do you suppose that a genuine, old-fashioned Indian 
baked pudding- could be made in one of your fuligi- 
nous modern iron stoves ? Can anything but a real 
old brick oven bring forth brown bread, or baked 
beans, golden-russet colored, with a piece of pork 
cut criss-cross on the top, of a beautiful bronze color ? 
There, now, you know all I can tell you. Go build 
your kitchen ! 

Now, my dear Mr. Bonner, can any man be ex- 



HEALTH AND EDUCATION. . 203 

pected to write articles under such circumstances? 
I must be excused. Tell your readers, if you please, 
that my " eyes and ears " are occupied upon other 
things, and cannot be used for literary purposes this 
week. 




HEALTH AND EDUCATION. 

GREAT amount of information has been 
spread through the community in regard 
to the laws and conditions of health, and 
there has been a corresponding increase of 
knowledge. Nor has the movement been undertaken 
a moment too soon. Wholesome diet, the avoidance 
of feverish stimulants, pure fresh air, and out-of-door 
exercises are the simple expedients to which we trust. 
But, in so far as special efforts are required, they 
should be brought to bear upon the development of 
sound nervous force. The brain and nervous sys- 
tem are from an early age, in this country, brought 
under a very great excitement. Our people are con- 
stitutionally excitable: the climate is exciting, the 
customs and habits of society tend to bring forward 
our children very early ; all the pursuits of life, with 
us, are conducted with intensity, and almost unre- 
lieved continuity. Our public affairs partake of this 
inflammable tendency, ajad are begun and conducted 
with frequent and intense excitements of the whole 
community. In short, the whole character and con-, 
dition of our people is such, that the brain and 
nervous system are kept under a very high pressure 
fr6m an early age in life. / 



204 • ^ EYES AND EARS. 

Against the evil tendency of this undue partial 
development there have been very few counteracting 
agencies. Our people have not been given to amuse- 
ments. They are not encouraged to have holidays. 
Even those amusements which have maintained them- 
selves have been, for the most part, of a kind that 
intensified the evil. When a man has all day long 
fevered his brain in the counting-room or office, he 
goes to a theatre or opera at night, substituthig another 
cause of excitement, but directed upon the overtasked 
brain. Others, seriously inclined, attend religious 
meetings, young men's associations, debating clubs, 
and other like gatherings, which, in their own way, 
tax the brain. 

Now, what is needed in the community is vigorous 
out-of-door recreation, developing the muscles and 
aiding digestion, accessible to all, and removed from 
special temptations to immoralities. 

There is no one way of meeting this want. But the 
public should give encouragement to every wholesome 
recreation that takes people out of doors, and gives 
them real bone-building exercise. Yachting is good 
for gentlemen of property. A yacht is nothing but 
the fast horse of the sea. Lantern trots, and the Ma- 
ria sails, but both of them are designed to run upon 
the fastest time-bill. But how many men can own 
the one or the other ? It is said — how truly we do 
not know — that one of the most enterprising of all 
gentlemen of the press, in New York, has given ten 
thousand dollars for Lantern and his mate. If any 
one will provide us with the money, and another Lan- 
tern, we will do tlie same, and we will agree to find a 
hundred young men that would consent to do it too ! 



HEALTH AND EDUCATION. 205 

When a man puts his saddle on the back of ten 
thousand dollars for an evening ride, he may be said 
fairly to have got Mammon under him ! We know 
that " money makes the mare go." But ten thousand 
dollars with bits in its mouth, and Jehu behind to 
drive, must carry a man at a fearful pace ! 

But it is not needful to ride lightning in order to 
enjoy a drive. Ten thousand men in New York and 
Brooklyn are able to drive out every afternoon with 
their families, with excellent, and not very expensive 
horses. Every merchant, lawyer, and business man, 
who can afford it, would do well to take this most 
wholesome exercise. 

But only a hundredth or thousandth part of the 
community are thus provided for. It is well, there- 
fore, that so many muscular games are coming into 
vogue. Base-ball and cricket are comparatively in- 
expensive, and open to all, and one can hardly con- 
ceive of better exercise. Boat-clubs for rowing are 
springing up in all our towns that have accessible 
waters. This gives an admirable development to the 
muscles. But all these are yet but a little for the 
thousands who need exercise. 

There ought to be gymnastic grounds and good 
bowling-alleys, in connection with reading-rooms, in 
every ward of the city, under judicious management, 
where, for a small fee, every young man might find 
various wholesome exercises, and withal good society, 
without the temptations which surround all the alleys 
and rooms of the city, kept for. bowling and billiards. 
It seems surprising, while so many young men's asso- 
ciations are organized, whose main trouble it is to 
find something to do, that some Christian association 



206 EYES AND EARS. 

should not undertake this important reformation, and 
give to the young men of our cities the means of 
physical vigor and health, separated from temptationa 
to vice. It would be a very gospel. 

But while provision is made for the development of 
the physical frame, there is much to be learned, and 
much wisdom to be exercised, in dealing with the 
mind. And we are much surprised, from some little 
observation, to see how apparently heedless are many 
of the teachers in our schools for girls. The pressure 
for the last year at any rate upon the girls who are 
to graduate is such as imperils their health for life. 
We know of many young ladies who are exercised 
in study night and day with such unremitting 
severity, that it seems impossible that they will not 
be exhausted by it. We have known several in- 
stances in which years of feebleness and nervous 
prostration followed the graduating year. If teachers 
are so ignorant or heedless of the laws of health, 
what shall we expect of common people ? Parents 
should look into this. Especially physicians, and 
gentlemen who are informed on sucli subjects, ought 
to exert an influence upon ambitious schools and 
seminaries. For an education that treads down the 
constitution of a child is a very doubtful benefit. 



ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING A PUBLIC MAN. 207 



ON THE PLEASURES OF BEmG A PUBLIC MAN. 




LL men are, to some extent, public men. 
They have public duties to perform. As 
householders, voters, jurymen, in short, as 
citizens, they are public men. But some 
men are obliged to perform their professional duties 
in open publicity. They are always acting before 
men, and their daily life is upon exhibition. Now 
there are a great many persons in relatively private 
life who quite envy such persons as the peculiar 
favorites of fortune ; =^and not a few make it an am- 
bition to attain such conspicuity. Ah, to see them- 
selves in a newspaper, placarded along the streets, 
advertised ! To hear their names and deeds in men's 
mouths ! — they think there would be nothing like it ! 
And, we assure them, that there is nothing like it. 

From a public man, curiosity, sympathy, and an- 
tagonism shear off all privacy, and almost all true 
personality. Your affairs are everybody's business. 
Your movements are everybody's observation. What 
you do or say, or do not do or say ; what you wear, 
where you go, with whom you walk, when you get 
up, and when lie down ; what it costs you to live, 
and how you get your means to pay for your living ; 
who makes your coat^, or boots ; who shaves your 
face, — all are diligently observed and reported. No 
privacy is allowed to a public man. Everybody uses 
him as common property. If a good story needs a 
known person to give it piquancy, his name is used 
upon it like a snapper on a whip-lash. Not only do 



208 EYES AND EARS. 

people use him up in conversation, but it makes little 
difference at length whether he is present or absent. 
" 0, he is a public man ! " is excuse enough for say- 
ing the rudest things ; and of all of them, none is so 
rude as blunt praise to his face ! 

Thus he is rained upon with himself. He reads 
about himself, runs over himself in the streets, finds 
himself figuring in the newspaper stories, and all 
beggars, and errand-hunters, and solicitors for public 
service, begin by setting him before himself in a 
public point of view. And, that nothing may be 
lacking, people wonder how it is that he is always 
contriving to get himself before the public ! 

One of the original faculties of the human mind, 
fundamental and universal, is the love of other 
people's private affairs. But strong as this faculty 
is, its action is somewhat guarded and concealed 
in the private relations of common citizens ; but 
never in respect to public men ! If he does not 
wish to be talked about, what is he a public man 
for ? He must expect people to take an interest in 
him, and everything that belongs to him. How does 
he eat and drink ? What is his income ? Where 
does he get it and how spend it ? The less proper 
it is that anything should be known, the more exqui- 
site is the relish of knowing it. 

■ It was Huber, we believe, who first constructed 
glass hives, through which bees could be seen at all 
hours and during every process of work. Public 
men are bees working in a glass hive, and curious 
spectators enjoy themselves in watching every secret 
movement as if it were a study in natural history. 

Nor is it allowed him to seem to know all this. If 



ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING A PUBLIC MAN. 20^ 

people stare at him in the street, or nudge each other 
in the ferry-boat and point at him, or if a bevy of 
young ladies whisper his name so that he may hear 
it at ten steps off, he yet must keep on a look of 
blessed unconsciousness ! If he takes a lunch at the 
restaurant, and twenty gentlemen subside from their 
knives and forks, to watch, square-faced and star- 
ingly, what he orders, and what becomes of it ; if he 
looks up and faces his spectators, of course they will 
not shrink or look down. One miglit as well try to 
make a battery of cannon wink with a look. At 
length a public man submits, and comes to think that 
he has no privacy. He is placed upon a pivot of ob- 
servation, like a whirligig on a steeple, watched in 
all weather, for men's amusement or convenience. 
People expect him to be peculiar. They are waiting 
for something characteristic. They hope for some 
remarkable speech, some eccentricity, some oddity or 
striking conduct, or misconduct. 

But all these things are only the fringe of the 
garment. Who can register the solicitations to 
which he is subject ? Is he reputed wealthy, — men 
swarm upon him as summer flies upon honey. Is he 
" influential '' and " popular," — who can enumerate 
the variety and number of " causes " that entirely 
live upon the help derived from the " influence " of 
those that are called to help them ? He is assailed 
for autographs, for signatures to all sorts of com- 
mendatory letters. One man wants his name to a 
petition for pardoning a man who was sent to states- 
prison for arson, and who, having experienced relig- 
ion, it is supposed would now be a useful member of 
society. Another man wishes his name to a recom- 



210 EYES AND EARS. 

raendation of insect powders and rat pills, or to a 
good and pious book, or to get a man whom he does 
not know a place in a store of which he never heard, 
or to put a worthy man into the navy-yard or on the 
" watch," or " police, " or into the railroad service. 

But all these things are light in comparison with 
expectations of charity at his hand. For a public 
man is expected to pay liberally for all the annoy- 
ances which are heaped upon him. He is a kind of 
public fountain, and everybody has a right to fill his 
cup or bucket if he can. After he has given, and 
given, till the pump sucks, and the pocket-well is dry, 
he is gravely reproved for not filling another bucket 
by being told, " Persons in your situation are expected 
to be liberal " ; or " Public men owe their standing 
to the public favor, and ought not be niggardly " ; or, 
" Men are expected to pay a tax for their greatness.'' 

Besides all this, there is the newspaper part of a 
public man's experience. It is so delightful to find 
your affairs arranged for you, and to learn for the 
first time, in the papers, where you have been, what 
you have said, and what has happened to yoiv! 
A man finds that he has had many remarkable 
experiences, of which he was before quite uncon- 
scious. And then, if he be a " public man," in 
political affairs, he will have an interesting oppor- 
tunity of finding out what people think of him ! He 
will see himself flagellated through the land, his 
words distorted, his actions tortured and misrepre- 
sented, or, if his politics are theological, he will find 
great opportunities for self-examination in the relig- 
ious newspapers. 

At length, a man grows nervous. The sound of 



CHBINEY-SWALLOWS. 211 

his bell makes him start like a pistol-shot. He longs 
for rest. No luxury seems to him like that of being 
let alone. The very people whom he would like to 
have near him keep away through delicacy, and leave 
him a prey to the insatiate pursuers of" public men." 
Is there no remedy ? Can we not devise a net, as 
we do for horses, to keep off gad-flies ? 

If we ever become supreme — an absolute monarch 
— we shall change things a little. When any public 
servant lias done well and deserves reward, we shall 
say, " For your meritorious services to the state, we 
give you the privilege of four months' retirement." 
But when evil men shall be brought up for punish- 
ment, we shall condemn them to four or six months', 
or a year's " public life," according to the heinous- 
ness of their offence, and the severity required in 
punishment ! 




CHIMNEY- SWALLOWS. 

YERY one knows, who lives in the country, 
what a chimney-swallow is. They are among 
the birds that seem to love the neighborhood 
of man. Many birds there are that nestle con- 
fidingly in the protection of their superiors, and are sel- 
dom found nesting or breeding far from human habita- 
tions. The wren builds close to your door. Sparrows 
and robins, if well treated, will make their nests right 
under your window, in some favorite tree, and will 
teach you, if you choose to go into the business, how 
to build bird's-nests, lay eggs, hatch out young birds, 



212 EYES AND EAES. 

and feed the tenderlings. A great deal of politeness 
and fidelity may be learned. The female bird is waited 
upon, fed, cheered with singing, during her incuba- 
tion, in a manner that might give lessons to the house- 
hold. Nay, when she needs exercise and recreation, 
her husband very demurely takes her place, and keeps 
the eggs warm in the most gentlemanly way. This is 
equivalent, we suppose, to rocking the cradle. 

Barn-swallows have a very sensible appreciation of 
the pleasures of an ample barn. A barn might not be 
found quite the thing to live in (although we have seen 
many a place where we would take the barn sooner 
than the house), but it is one of the most charming 
places in a summer day to lounge, read, or nap in. 
And as you lie on your back upon the sweet-scented 
hay-mow, or upon clean straw thrown down on the 
great floor, reading books of natural history, or suck- 
ing honey out of Keats, it is very pleasant to see the 
flitting swallows glance in and out, or course about 
under the roof, with motion so lithe and rapid as to 
seem more like the glancing of shadows than the 
winging of birds. Their mud nests are clean, if they 
are made of dirt. And you would never dream from 
their feathers what sort of a house they lived in. 

But these birds have flown into this article una- 
wares, for it was of chimney-swallows that we began 
to write, and they are just now roaring in the little 
stubbed chimney behind us, to remind us of our duty. 
Every evening we hear them. For a nest of young 
ones brings the parents in with food early and late, 
and every entrance or exit is like a distant roll of 
thunder, or like those old-fashioned rumblings of high 
winds in the chimney which made us children thmk 



CHIMNEY-SWALLOWS. 213 

that all out of doors was coming down the chimney 
in stormy nights. These little architects build their 
simple nests upon the sides of the chimney with sticks, 
which they are said to break off from dead branches 
of trees, though they might more easily pick them up 
already prepared. But they doubtless have their own 
reasons for cutting their own timber. Then these are 
glued to the wall by a saliva which they secrete, so 
that they carry their mortar in their mouths, and use 
their bills for trowels. When the young are ready 
to leave, they climb up the chimney to the top by 
means of their sharp claws, aided by their tail-feath- 
ers, which are short, stiff, and at the end armed with 
sharp spines. Two broods are reared in a season. 

From the few which congregate in any one neigh- 
borhood, one would not suspect the great numbers 
which assemble at the end of the season. Audubon 
estimated that nine thousand entered a large sycamore 
tree every night, to roost, near Louisville, Ky. 

Sometimes the little nest has been slighted in build- 
ing, or the weight proves too great, and down it comes 
into the fireplace, to the great amusement of the chil- 
dren, who are all a-fever to hold in their hands these 
clean, bright-eyed little fellows. Who would suspect 
that they had ever been bred in such a flue ? 

And it was just this thought that set us to writing. 
Because a bird lives, in a chimney he need not be 
smutty. There is many a fine feather that lives in a 
chimney-corner. Nor are birds the only instances. 
Many men are born in a garret or in a cellar, who fly 
out of it, as soon as fledged, as fine as anybody. A 
lowly home has reared many high natures. On these 
bare sticks, right against the bricks, in this smoky flue, 



214 EYES AND EARS. 

the eggs are laid, the brooding goes on, the young are 
hatched, fed, grown. But then comes the day when 
they spread the wing, and the whole heaven is theirs ! 
From morning to night they cannot touch the bounds 
of their Uberty. And in hke manner it is with the hu- 
man soul that has learned to know its liberty. Born 
in a body, pent up, and cramped, it seems imprisoned 
in a mere smoky flue for passions. But when once 
Faith has tauglit the soul that it has wings, then it 
begins to fly, and flying, finds that all God's domain 
is its liberty. And as the swallow that comes back to 
roost in its hard hole at night is quite content, so that 
the morning gives it again all the bright heavens for 
its soaring-ground, so may men, close quartered and 
cramped in bodily accommodations, be quite patient 
of their narrow bounds, for their thoughts may fly out 
every day gloriously. 

And as, in autumn, these children of the chimney 
gather in flocks and fly away to heavens without a 
winter, so men shall find a day when they too shall 
migrate ; and rising into a higher sphere, without 
storm or winter, shall remember the troubles of this 
mortal life, as birds in Florida may be supposed to 
remember the northern chills which drove them forth 
to a fairer clime! 



THE FARM. 215 



THE FARM. 




T once befell me to buy a small farm. Com- 
pared with my wants, it was large ; and yet 
larger, if compared with my ability to de- 
velop its resources. 
There is a distinct joy in owning land, unlike that 
which you have in money, in houses, in books, pic- 
tures, or anything else which men have devised. 
Personal property brings you into society with men. 
But land is a part of God's estate in the globe ; and 
when a parcel of ground is deeded to you, and you 
walk over it, and call it your own, it seems as if you 
had come into partnership with the Original Proprietor 
of the earth. Nothing removes your property from 
its firm foundations. No wind can wreck it, nor 
rains dissolve it, nor decay take it down. The sills 
will never rot, and nothing will ever sway or sag it. 
There it lies, firm, deep (a great deal deeper than you 
will ever care to go down), inexpugnable to summer 
or winter, with all their silent forces or their boister- 
ous storms. And it is yours. Since the planet set 
up for itself, your land has been preparing. Innu- 
merable myriads of leaves have grown and fallen, to 
form its soil. Grasses and roots, for whose numbers 
there can be no arithmetic, have helped on the culture. 
Rocks have slowly crumbled to form its loam. Insects 
have made laboratories of themselves, secreting and 
elaborating various qualities, which, at their autumnal 
death, have gone back to the soil to enrich it. Worms 
have bored and dug air-passages through it for ages 



216 EYES AND EARS. 

before a plough was known on earth. Winter frosts 
have locked and unlocked its clay ; rains have brought 
down upon it from the air minute medicines. You 
stand upon a history without a record. You own 
that which, if you could trace bauk its changes, would 
carry you beyond the flood, beyond the garden of 
Eden, and a good deal farther on than that ! God 
has had millions and millions of unhired, but not 
unpaid, laborers at work on this soil. It is burial- 
ground for minute atoms of former swarms and tribes 
beyond all stretch of numbers. Ages have shaken 
down their dust here. And my foot treads upon ten 
thousand buried years. 

If I think downward, what is the mysterious in- 
terior of this silent earth ? How far inward should 
we go before we felt the heat of that fire-pulse which 
throbs in the molten middle of*" the globe ? And, if 
we look outward, what realms has not this farm trav- 
ersed in its mighty rounds, turning its face in suc- 
cession to every star in the solar concave ! 

But I cannot honestly say that it was the relation 
of this interesting piece of land to the stars, or to 
the centre of the earth, nor the force of any such 
romantic reflections upon bugs and decaying grasses, 
and air-tillage, and storm-washes, and all that, which 
led me to buy this farm. Nor was it that famous 
trees beckoned me. For, besides two noble hickories, 
one gigantic apple-tree (with which I defy competition 
on the continent), one tulip-tree (with a Latin name 
— Liriodendron Tulipifera — sweet enough for lovers' 
lips in twilight hours), and one venerable branch- 
broken and rugged old pine, that sighs and sings to 
the wind on the lawn, — there are none worth a 



THE FAKM. 217 

thought. To be sure, a double row of maples lines 
the avenue. But though a maple-tree is a clean, 
useful, excellent tree, it has nothing in it that touches 
the imagination. It is a rovmd, compact, and proper 
tree, like many excellent people of good sense and 
homely kindness, but without any grandeur or wild- 
ness of imagination. Maple-trees are tlie cows of 
trees (spring-milked), plain, good, useful, but not 
adorable. 

I knew that the place was good for grass, for grain, 
and for fruits, of all of which I talked a good deal 
during the preliminary approaches to a purchase, 
but for which I cared about as much as I should 
whether the inside of my boots were red or yellow. 

If the thing must be told, and i mention it, Mr. 
Bonner, to you confidentially, it was the remarkable 
aptitude of the place for eye-crops that caught jny 
fancy. It was not so much what grew upon tlie place, 
as what you could see off from it, that won me. It 
is a great stand for the eye. If a man can get rich 
by looking^ I am on the royal road to wealth. And, 
indeed, it is true wealth that the eye gets, and the 
ear, and all the finer senses ; — riches that cannot 
be hoarded or squandered ; that all may have in 
common ; that come without meanness, and abide 
without corrupting. So long as it remains true 
that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
earth his handiwork, so long will men find both 
heart-wealth and strength, by a reverent admiration 
of the one and a sympathetic, familiarity with the 
other. 



10 



218 EYES AND EARS. 



THE HIGHWAY OF THE PEOPLE. 




F popular rights and benefits depended upon 
the fidehty and honesty of pohtical parties, 
we should have little faith in their long con- 
tinuance. Men are both proud and selfish. 
Nor in public affairs has Christianity countervailed 
even to the small degree manifest in social affairs. As 
fast as men rise above the average of their fellows, they 
are apt to grow in self-importance, to look down upon 
those below them, first with pity, and then with some 
degree of disguised contempt. And the prosperous 
are always tempted to form themselves into a class, 
and rule the unprospered. 

It is, therefore, a sign of good in our age, that the 
prosperity of the common people has become so asso- 
ciated with the very elements of convenience, that, 
whatever men do as classes to favor themselves, in the 
long run benefits the whole community. 

Does a man wish to be a profound scholar ? How 
shall he live, unless he make his learning of some use ? 
The price which he pays for eminence is, that he shall 
enlighten the community as he goes up. 

None of the liberal professions disdains the most 
comprehensive and profound learning ; but it must be 
learning which shall bring a man into service and 
sympathy with the people, or he will walk almost 
alone. There is no government to patronize any- 
thing. There is no learned class in our midst. There 
is no sufficient number of rich men to hold out a hope 
to any that they may despise or neglect the common 



THE HIGHWAY OF THE PEWLE. 219 

people. It is to the masses of the community that 
men must look for support. 

When it was attempted, in New York, to establish 
music for the benefit of the rich, the opera failed. Nor 
did it succeed until it came within the reach, and so- 
licited the sympathy, of common people. Lectures, 
literary enterprises, papers, books, all are obliged to 
ask the common people whether they may succeed. 
Even Science cannot refuse to come from her labora- 
tory or descend from her observatory. It is found 
that a general, popular sympathy in scientific matters 
forms a public atmosphere in which philosophers thrive. 
The American Scientific Convention is eminently phil- 
osophical and wise, therefore, in opening its meetings 
to the community ; in going from place to place ; in 
making membership open to all. There is a Divine 
hand in this thing. It is not meant that men should 
separate themselves from their fellows as fast as they 
are prospered, and leave the poor, the ignorant, the 
rude, to herd together at the bottom. The nature of 
our institutions, the habits of the community, the very 
economic laws of society, compel men, in going up, to 
draw the common people up a little way too. 

There was a time when Ai^t looked, for patrons and 
support, to nobles and monarchs. And, of course, 
without the intention, it was obliged to express the 
ideas which the ruling classes favored. But now, 
happily. Art must draw its support from the favor of 
the common people. It is vain to look to govern- 
ments, state or national. They are poor customers. 
Artists that wait for public orders will die in the poor- 
houses. It is to the intelligent and flourishing house- 
holder that we must look for any such encouragement 



220 EYES AND EARS. 

of Art as shall make it flourishing. And artists must 
not demand that people shall take what artists like, 
unless artists are first willing to paint what the people 
like. It is all very well to rail at the want of taste 
and appreciation in the community. It is the artist's 
business to educate the community. Even in a com- 
mercial point of view it is necessary. He must pre- 
pare his market. Portraiture always thrives, and 
always will, as long as men are vain or their friends 
fond. But beyond this, Art will prosper in proportion 
as it speaks to the wants and feelings of common peo- 
ple. And long ago this truth has been seen and obeyed. 
Look at the fabrics sold for a price within reach of the 
poor. The finest forms in glass, china, wedgewood, 
or clay, put classic models within reach of every table. 
The cheapness of lithographs, mezzotints, etchings, and 
photographs, is bringing to every cottage-door portfo- 
lios in which the greatest pictures, statues, buildings, 
and memorials of past and triumphs of modern Art 
are represented. That which, twenty years ago, could 
be found only among the rich, to-day may be had by 
the day-laborer. This is the true levelling. Let 
knowledge, art, refinement, be brought down, as the 
sunlight is. The sun is no poorer, no darker, because 
the world has fed so many thousand years at his 
bosom. Down come the sheets of light, flaming 
through space, flaming over all the earth, enriching 
all things without impoverishing the source whence 
they spring. Let knowledge, beauty, goodness, shine 
down upon the path, and make the way plain along 
which the people are to tread ! 



ASKING ADVICE, AND OXEN. 221 



ASKING ADVICE, AND OXEN. 




Y DEAR Sir: I know that you are able to 
give good advice upon farm interests ; at 
least, upon all that turns upon horses. But 
are you also posted upon other things ? Do 
you know how to plough ? to reap ? to drain ? to 
build walls ? Are you skilful in compost ? Can you 
throw light upon planting out strawberries ? pre- 
paring the ground for a pear-orchard ? Do you know 
how to lay down a lawn, to plant trees, to group 
them, with reference to their forms, their colors, and 
their effects at all seasons ? Well ; if you cannot help 
me on these momentous topics, can you give me any 
advice on the subject of oxen? Do you think oxen 
better, on the whole, for farm-work, than horses ? 
You know, I suppose, the argument, — horses are 
quicker, and a little more " handy." Oxen are more 
patient, stronger, less expensive in their keeping, and, 
when they have performed several seasons' faithful 
work, they will, as disobliging horses will not, change 
into good^ beef. Now I seriously wish your advice as 
to which I had better have. For / have just bought 
a pair of oxen, and am, like most men, now ready 
to ask advice under circumstances which make it 
impossible for me to take it, unless it accords with 
a foregone fact. I shall, therefore, expect you to 
say that oxen by all means are to be preferred on 
the farm. I hope, also, that you will be of opinion, 
that they ought to be about four years old, of a white 
color, except the head and neck, which should be 



222 EYES AND EAES. 

roan ; and that they should by all means be Durham 
grade stock, say three-quarter blood, and that it 
would be better to buy them in Jefferson County, say 
in the town of Adams. For, if you advise all these 
things, then you will be pleased to learn that such 
are the facts. 

Of course, you will now imagine your worthy cor- 
respondent, with a long whip, bawling at every other 
step, at the top of his voice, whenever he wishes the 
least thing done, for that is the common practice. 
You will expect every order to be given in such a 
way, that not one man in a hundred could tell what 
is meant, let alone poor dumb brute beasts. For not 
a great way off I hear men now driving oxen. When 
they wish anything done, they give three separate 
orders, two of which always contradict each other. 
If they are to start, the man says, " Whoa, gee, go- 
long!" or, "Whoa, back, haw!" And generally 
every order is given with a smart cut of the whip. 
And whenever the creatures, a little perplexed or 
vexed, miss the command, then comes a roar of pas- 
sionate ox-invective, accompanied with four or five 
whacks, together with some pokes and slashes ; and, 
unless the driver belongs to the church, he almost 
always curses a little, and, in extreme cases, once in 
half an hour say, sends the whole team to — a place 
where good oxen never go, and bad men do. Now 
would it not do you good to see your virtuous and 
excellent correspondent, very red in the face, and 
laying it on to his cattle because they did not un- 
derstand his absurd orders, or because he had lost 
his own temper? 

But all this is not to happen, even if you advise it. 



ASKING ADVICE, AND OXEN. 22S 

For mj oxen are sensible, well-bred, and used to the 
gentlest treatment. They have always been spoken 
to softly ; told gently just the thing that you wished 
them to do, and never struck. They drive out of 
the yoke just as well as in it. They stand or go at 
a word. They step quick and work as fast as a pair 
of heavy horses would do. 

I have heard my father say that it was the oxen 
that sent him to college. He did not know at the 
time what it was that made farming so utterly un- 
endurable to him. He was quick, nervous, restless ; 
and to walk by the dull sides of slow-treading oxen 
all day long was a task beyond all endurance. He 
was determined not to be a farmer. His uncle, who 
brought him up, came to the same result by another 
way. For the boy could never be tamed so that, at 
sight of a squirrel, he would not leave cart, plough, 
or team, wherever they happened to be, and take after 
the bushy-tailed temptation, — down the rail-fence 
across the road, and into the stone-fence, when the 
squirrel, with a victorious churk ! and a whisk of the 
tail, disappeared. Moreover, the lad had a marvel- 
lous gift of taking things out of their places, and 
never putting them back again (a trait which ought 
not to have been hereditary), and so, one morning, 
when the old gentleman went out early to the barn 
to fodder the cattle, and saw the saddle lying in the 
middle of the yard, bottom side up, and the bridle 
on the ground in another place, he was convicted on 
the instant, that " Lyman would never be fit for any- 
thing but to go to college." 

It is partly with the hope of the same results in my 
own family, that I have concluded on oxen instead of 



224 EYES AND EARS. 

horses. I have tried all sorts of teachers, but they 
always know too much and the boys too little. I 
mean to try a quarter's tuition under the judicious 
management of the new oxen, and after about six 
months, depend upon it, there will be work for Am- 
herst or Yale. Driving horses does not seem to tame 
young bloods. If the horses are fast, the boys are 
faster. But try ox-cure. I never have learned an 
instance of a young man led into bad company by 
oxen. No sprees in winter, no frolics in summer, 
no racing, no wildness, is apt to follow the habit of 
driving oxen ! 

And now, my dear sir, will you not come up and 
see my new turn-out ? I invite you, and the most 
enterprising publisher of a recent volume on farming, 
to come up and take a ride in my cart. The crea- 
tures are good, too, for single work, and a little prac- 
tice, I am sure, will make them patient of the saddle, 
and then, what is to hinder our taking, some soft 
and gentle evening, a good, sensible, leisurely ride 
on ox-back along the shady roads ? Besides, if either 
of us should ever make up our minds to go on a 
Foreign Mission, we should, if sent to South Africa, 
be already in the way of the riding generally prac- 
tised there. 




THE OFFICE OF ART. 225 



THE OFFICE OF ART. 

OME incidental remarks, in a recent number, 
have called forth the following letter from a 
well-known artist, one of whose pictures, the 
sleepy head of a cud-chewing cow, hangs 
before us at every meal. 

"August 25, 1859. 

"Dear Sik: In the * Thoughts as they Occur' of the last 
number of your valuable paper stands a paragraph not fully 
explained, I take it, by the author, and therefore hable to mis- 
construction. It runs thus : — 

"'Artists must not demand that people shall take what 
artists hke, unless artists a,re first willing to paint what the 
people Uke.' 

" The author admits that ' it is the artist's business to edu- 
cate the community.' As the community, then, has an inter- 
est in this question of ALrt, the community ought, as an intelH- 
gent pupil, to understand its true position. The artist also, 
as a modest and intelligent teacher, ought to understand his 
own.' 

" Most true it is that the artist has to * paint what the people 
hke,' but only because he must Hve and satisfy necessities, not 
from an acknowledgment of the right in the people to dictate 
to him. He is the public servant in no other sense than is 
the poet, the man of science, the minister of the Gospel. If 
Art is something more than imitation ; if it is even more than 
mere intellectual production ; if it is a child of the affections, 
an emanation of the moral part of the man, modulated by his 
intellect, then it is as sacred and inviolate as his religion, and 
cannot be prescribed. 

" Moreover, if the artist, like the poet, is a teacher of some- 
thing, he must lead, not follow. He wisely adapts the les- 
10* ^ o 



226 EYES AND EARS. 

sons to the mind and capacity of his pupils, and thus far he 
may consult them. 

" In the noblest degree the artist rises to be a prophet. 

" Who is it that shows him the vision ? Is it the people ? 
Inspiration is of Divine source, and the man who receives it 
is commissioned by God, though for proclaiming this message 
the world should let him starve. He may, like St. Paul, 
labor with his hands to supply his own wants, but this * tent- 
making * for a living, and the preaching of his heavenly mes- 
sage, will ever remain distinctly separated concerns, in no wise 
to be confounded. 

"An Artist." 

We regard Art, in its higher offices, as a language. 
And as a poet, an orator, or a writer employs words 
and sentences to convey thoughts and feelings, so the 
artist employs forms, colors, and symmetries to convey 
some sentiment or truth. Many pleasing pictures 
there are without much meaning in them, — pleasing, 
because there is a pleasure in mere color and in form 
for their own sakes ; just as there is a charm in fine 
language, almost without regard to the thought con- 
veyed. But such in literature, and such pictures in 
Art, are passing trifles. A book that is to live with 
you, to be a companion, an instructor, must have 
something better than polished words or well-wrought 
sentences. It must have thoughts and sentiments 
that touch the head and the heart. Then a book 
becomes a silent power more aiid more influential. 
In like manner a picture, if it is to live with you, to 
ingratiate itself with you, to become necessary to you, 
must have, not only color and form, but something 
under them. Something there must be that shall 
touch the secret chords of feeling. An artist who 



THE OFFICE OF ART. 227 

only imitates what lie paints is like an imitator in 
oratory or in poetry. He must have some thought 
or some feeling, which he wishes to express, and his 
picture is first to be judged by the sentiment which 
it contains, and then by the color-mode and the form- . 
mode of expression. 

Now every artist, like every other thinker, has the 
most perfect right to think for himself, and express 
his thoughts as he pleases. He may select his sub- 
jects when he pleases, and in the manner of any 
school. No one can find any fault with him, until 
he turns around to the public and says : " You don't 
buy my pictures ! You don't like them ! But you 
ought to like them ! If you are not educated up to 
them, you should be." The greater part of society 
will simply laugh, and let the poor artist starve. But 
would not the same be true of every preacher, if, 
instead of applying moral truth to the ideas and 
manners of the age in which he lives, he should dig 
up the controversies of Origen, and feed his people 
on the topics which were fresh a thousand years ago, 
but are now dry as those thousand-year-old mum- 
mies in their silent grinning rows in Egypt ? What 
if a lecturer should give to the audience an able and 
learned account of things once good and vital, but 
which long since went to seed ? Ought he to turn 
and say to the community, " You don't like me, be- 
cause you are not educated enough " ? Of course. 
If a man preaches Latin, and writes Greek, the rea- 
son why the community will not care for his prelec- 
tions is, that they do not know enough. If he will 
be heard, he must speak to the people in their own 
language. This is the s\im of what we say about 



228 EYES AND EARS. 

Art. If it will please, it must address itself, not to 
an imaginary taste, but to a real sentiment, in the 
public. Taste changes with every age, but the origi- 
nal feelings of the human soul roll on from age to 
age the same, unchanged and unchangeable. And 
a picture which addresses itself plainly and strongly 
to any of the heart's feelings will always have admir- 
ers. While we write, there hangs before us a fine 
engraving of Leonardo da Yinci's Madonna (La 
Vierge au Bas-Relief). When this was painted all 
men believed in the Virgin Mary, according to the 
reverential and half-divine estimate of the Roman 
Catholic Church. That belief has waned and gone 
out. And yet, in Protestant America, the picture, 
if less reverenced, would be as much loved as at the 
day and in the land where it was painted. For it 
is still a Mother with Children. As long as the 
world endures, a picture that fitly handles that sub- 
ject will live in love that time cannot abate. As the 
" Mother of God "^t was not so powerful as now it 
is simply as a Mother of Men. 

And, in like manner, a picture that touches any 
afiection or moral sentiment, will speak in a language 
which men understand, without any other education 
than that of being born and of living. If artists 
choose to paint scholastic pictures, they must not 
grumble if only scholars care for them. If they will 
paint classical pictures, they must go to a market 
where men want such wares. If they will paint my- 
thologies, or court subjects, or any other subjects, 
that are beyond or above the people, they must not 
expect a market for them among the people. 

We protest against the arrogance of those who say, 



THE OFFICE OF ART. 229 

or think, that an artist condescends when he repre- 
sents by his art the subjects which belong to the life 
of the masses. The life of the common people is the 
best part of the world's life. It will ennoble any man 
who reverently expresses those thoughts and feelings 
on which the race stands. This contempt for the 
common people is the worst fruit of debauched pride. 
Not their ignorance, their tastes, their deeds, their 
knowledge, their refinements, are always to be es- 
teemed. But the loves, the hopes, the joys, the 
friendships, the aspirations, the sorrows, of the great 
human family are always to be revered. Art digni- 
fies itself when it embodies them. No man is fit to 
be an artist of men who does not profoundly feel 
how sublime common human heart-life is beyond 
his own art. And he only will be a true master 
whose education or disposition leads him to love the 
things which the race loves, and to paint them, not 
in condescension, not for the sake of a market, but 
because in his soul he feels that the life of the com- 
mon people is the life of God, in so far as it is 
revealed in any age. 



230 EYES AND EARS. 



FREE TOWN LIBRARIES. 




HE establishment of free town libraries has 
not received the attention which its impor- 
tance deserves. Tlie first free town library, 
we believe, ever established, was at New 
Bedford, Mass. We do not know upon what histori- 
cal authority the statement rests ; but we derived it 
from a gentleman connected with that library, whose 
intelligence and caution lead us to think that he could 
not be in error. If the facts are so, our country is 
honored in beginning so admirable an institution. 

Libraries of every kind are multiplying with unex- 
ampled rapidity. The private libraries of New York 
will, for number, for the range of works, their great 
intrinsic value, their rarity, and costliness, astonish all 
who have not directed their attention to the subject. 
A series of papers last year appeared in the Evening 
Post, giving accounts of many of these noble monu- 
ments of private enterprise. 

The libraries of colleges, of the various professions, 
law, medicine, &c., of literary societies and mechani- 
cal institutions, together with the state and national 
libraries, increase the growing supply of books for the 
universal reader. But all these do little or nothing 
for the smaller towns and the country proper. There 
is needed a class of libraries to which our young farm- 
ers and our .country mechanics can have free access. 
Much as books are cheapened, a library is yet too ex- 
pensive a luxury for private families, whose living de- 
pends upon their daily labor. Besides, in thousands 



FKEE TOWN LIBRARIES. 231 

of instances, even if the money were possessed, the dis- 
position to own books is yet to be created. Now if in 
each town, and in thickly settled regions and smaller 
districts, there were a well-endowed free public li- 
brary, those who hunger for books could be fed, and 
those who have never learned to love such food might 
be tempted, all the more easily because it would cost 
them nothing. 

In such libraries it is desirable that those works 
should be stored which are important to all the differ- 
ent branches of industry, and to the learned profes- 
sions, and such more expensive collections of history, 
travel, and art, as are not usually within the means of 
private purchasers. It is a great folly to fill up a 
public library with the evanescent trash which now too 
often encumbers their shelves. Public funds should 
make a more permanent investment, and young men 
and women shotild find here works not otherwise 
within their reach. 

There are two points which ought specially to be 
considered. First, whether, with large and comforta- 
ble accommodation, both for quiet reading and for 
social intercourse, a free library may not afford a safe 
rendezvous for the young, for many hours that would 
otherwise be employed in places of temptation. And, 
second, whether, with suitable arrangements, one li- 
brary may not be made to serve both men and women, 
avoiding all necessity of women's libraries, as such. 
The Boston free city library is one of the noblest mon- 
uments erected in. that city of noble institutions. 
And there rooms are provided for men and women 
alike, where they may quietly meet, read, write, or 
pursue t^*'*" intelligent investigations. 



232 EYES AND EARS. 

In several instances within our knowledge, these 
free town libraries have been established by the con- 
tributions of public-spirited citizens, and the town has 
afterwards voted an annual appropriation to maintain 
and increase the same. If every town would build a 
large town-house, with a hall, which, while it served 
for all ordinary meetings of citizens, should give am- 
ple space for public lectures during the winter, there 
might be established in it the alcoves of a free library. 
Then every town would have an institution for moral 
and intellectual culture, of incalculable value. Ten 
years will change the face of a town if a good school, 
or a good course of lectures, or a good free library be 
established in it. 

But while the importance of free town libraries 
justifies the action of the towns themselves, these in- 
stitutions give admirable opportunity for rich and 
benevolent men to hand down to posterity their names 
honorably distinguished in connection with noble in- 
stitutions which they shall have founded and endowed. 
Every man ought to be his own executor in charitable 
gifts. While he is alive, and can superintend his own 
work, let him bestow his money. After his death his 
,money may be applied to the purposes which he con- 
templated, or it may not. But if, while living, he 
establishes an institution for the diffusion of public 
intelligence, his work will be better done, and he will 
in part reap the reward of his liberality in the grati- 
tude of his fellow-citizens. 



HONOR YOUR BUSINESS. 



23^ 



HONOR YOUR BUSINESS. 




T is a good sign when a man is proud of his 
work, or his calhng. Yet nothing is more 
common than to hear men finding fault 
constantly with their particular business, 
and deeming themselves unfortunate because fastened 
to it by the necessity of gaining a livelihood. In 
this spirit men fret, and laboriously destroy all their 
comfort in work. Or they change their business, and 
go on miserably shifting from one thing to another, 
'till the grave or the poorhouse gives them a perma- 
nent situation. 

But while, occasionally, a man fails in life because he 
is not in the place fitted for his peculiar talent, it hap- 
pens ten times oftener that failure results from neglect 
and even contempt of an honest business. A man 
should put his heart into everything that he does. 
There is not a profession in the world that has not its 
peculiar cares and vexations. No man will escape 
annoyance by changing business. No mechanical 
business is altogether agreeable. Commerce, in its 
endless varieties, is affected, like all other human pur- 
suits, with trials, unwelcome duties, and spirit-tiring 
necessities. It is the very wantonness of folly for a 
man to search out the frets and burdens of his callinof 
and give his mind every day to a consideration of 
them. They belong to human life. They are inevita- 
ble. Brooding, then, only gives them strength. 

On the other hand, a man has a power given him 
to shed beauty and pleasure upon the homeliest toil, 



234 EYES AND EARS. 

if he is wise. Let a man -adopt bis business, and 
identify it witli bis life, and cover it witb pleasant 
associations. For God bas given us imagination, not 
alone to make some men poets, but to enable all men 
to beautify bomely things. Heart-varnish will cover 
up innumerable evils and defects. Look at the good 
things. Accept your lot as a man does a piece of 
rugged ground, and begin to get out the rocks and 
roots, to deepen and mellow the soil, to enrich and 
plant it. There is something in the most forbidding 
avocation around which a man may twine pleasant 
fancies, out of which he may develop an honest 
pride. 

We met, not long since, a fine specimen of just 
the thing we mean. 

He began life a blacksmith. " I never wanted to 
be anything else than a mechanic," said he. He 
determined to make himself respectable and honor- 
able, not in spite of his business, but by means of it. 
He entered with heart and soul and ambition into it. 
Little by little he improved it. Selecting a single line 
of articles, he began manufacturing them. " When I 
first entered the market," said he, " I found every- 
body trying to sell cheaper than his neighbor, and so 
making poorer and poorer articles, and running down 
tlie trade. I determined that I would not undersell, 
but excels 

In this spirit he entered heartily into his work, 
was proud of it, nursed and nourished it, and now 
he is, in his own department, almost without a com- 
petitor in the market. He has gathered riches, which 
he employs benevolently, and is respected and hon- 
ored by all his townsmen. The good which this hon- 



HONOK YOUK BUSINESS. 235 

est mechanic has done will not stop with himself. 
He will have made his business honorable to others. 
A man can impai't to a business a flavor of honor 
by his own conduct, which shall make it thereafter 
more creditable to any one who enters it. Franklin 
left upon the printing-office an impress which has 
benefited the profession of printers ever since. Black- 
smiths love to speak of the yet uncanonized St. Elihu 
Burritt. 

Mr. Dowse, by tanning and currying, amassed a 
fortune, and bequeathed it, and its literary products, 
to the public in Boston and Cambridge ; and we ven- 
ture to say that, hereafter, that business will be easier 
and more encouraging to every lad that is bound 
apprentice to the nasty trade. Once let a man con- 
vert his business into an instrument of honor, benevo- 
lence, and patriotism, and from that moment it is 
transfigured, and men judge its dignity and merit, 
not by what it externally is, but by what it has don^, 
and can do. It is better to stick to your business, 
and, by patient industry and honorable enterprise, 
crown it with honor, than to run away from it, and 
seek prosperity ready-made to your hand. It is not 
what a man finds that does him good, but what he 
does. 



236 EYES AND EARS. 



MOTHS, WINGED AND LEGGED. 




Y DEAR Mr. Bonner : As you are a business 



man, having always more to do than you 
can perform, I hope that you will sympa- 
thize with me in my abhorrence of moths. 
I do not mean those beautiful winged fools that, in 
attempting, on summer nights, to put out our candles, 
only succeed in putting themselves out ; nor those 
moths which use for food what we employ for a cover- 
ing, who look upon an overcoat as we do upon roast 
beef, upon our furs as we do on chickens and wild 
game. It always seemed to me that, however mis- 
chievous to us was a moth's appetite, it must be a 
very dry and melancholy tiling to him, to eat dry 
cloth, with nothing to drink, growing fat upon rub- 
bish, and washing it down with darkness. I would 
not have you think that I am any more amiable than 
other people, when either of these moths assail my 
peace. I am nervous enough not to resist the sud- 
den flap of a great winged miller in my candle as I 
am quietly reading, and his oflf-bouncing into my face, 
and fluttering over and around it with the most lively 
familiarity. Nor do I like in autumn to find my best 
coat eaten in holes all over, and my pantaloons look- 
ing as if I had been shot while running away from an 
enemy. Yet a little philosophy will teach us patience 
in such things, especially in contrast with the annoy- 
ances of other moths. 

First, are those that anoint you with praise. It 
might have felt good to old kings to be anointed. We 



MOTHS, WINGED AND LEGGED. 237 

have never thought that a flask of oil poured on our 
head would inspire a sense of dignity as it went 
smoothly down the skin, dripping from the beard, and 
streaking the dress. But even though the oil were 
rancid, we think the operation more bearable than to 
be daubed with flattery. A friend who live^ near 
your heart has a right to speak to you of that in you 
which excites his love. But a casual acquaintance, a 
stranger, a chance companion, have no right to insult 
you by supposing that you love flattery. This vice, 
which is inexcusable among ignorant and half-bred 
men, is utteliy unpardonable among literary persons, 
who, as soon as you are first made known to them, 
begin to recall to you what they have read of your 
writing, or what you have done, or, if they can remem- 
ber nothing of that, assume a complimentary reserve, 
and intimate the great delight which they have taken 
in your achievements. Is there no camphor, no 
ground pepper, no yellow snufl*, for these moths ? 

Then comes the neighbor who has nothing to do, 
and means that nobody else shall do anything, who 
gets into your house, you hardly know how, and gets 
out you hardly can tell when, but drones and fatigues 
your ear with all the miserable tattle of the neighbor- 
hood. Would it be manslnnghtGr to kill a fool? 
Ought not the law to give a man some discretionary 
power over the life of these mosquitos and gnats, 
that have, by some strange freak of nature, grown into 
the shape of men, without losing the propensities of 
insects ? 

Next, are men that never know when they have got 
through their business. They see by your look and 
attitude that they have caught you just at a moment 



238 EYES AND EARS. 

of inspiration. Your fine thoughts are evaporating 
as they stand fuming about some errand that no more 
concerns you than do the domestic wants of a polar 
bear. Indeed, you feel not altogether unlike that 
savage animal. You answer emphatically, abruptly, 
perpmidicularly ; but there he is. No is no answer. 
You renew the answer, and fire into him with deadly 
aim, and he stirs no more than if he were a target, 
whose duty it was to stand and be shot at. One sweet 
fancy is gone already. The fine pulse of imagination 
is changing in you to the throb of vexation ; and 
when, at last, you have got rid of the man, you have 
got rid, also, of your ideas, and sit down to your 
paper very much as a whipped schoolboy does who has 
a composition to write, and nothing in his head to 
write it with. 

There is a kind of day-moth, an epistolary moth, 
of the same kind, who writes you a letter of business, 
or request, and begins it with excuses, and long- 
drawn apologies, or well-rounded complimentary rea- 
sons. You have to get into the letter, very much as 
a boy does into a blackberry patch. And the single, 
solitary berry hangs in the middle of a quickset 
hedge, and is not ripe when you get it, but sour 'and 
red. A man should deliver his letter as a sportsman 
does his shot. Let him glance at his errand like a 
rising woodcock, pull the trigger instantly, and bring 
him down without more ado. 

There: I have expressed my mind, and feel better. 
After all, is it not wonderful that men do so well as 
they do ? Consider how many men you daily meet, 
most of them with pleasure, and few of them with 
real annoyance. Common sense, at least in its lower 



BOStOX EEMiiXISCENCES. 2r,9 

forms, is more common than we are apt to think. 
And, on tlie whole, you need not do anything about 
these moths. Perhaps half of my impatience in such 
things is conceit. Am I too good to bear my part of 
life's vexations ? Why should I not be annoyed as 
well as other people ? How can a man be gracious, 
gentle, condescending, unless there is some occasion 
which requires such virtues ? 

Nt5w that I think about it, is there not something 
said about patience in Holy Writ ? Let me see. I'll 
search. Ah, here it is, in 1 Thessalonians v. 14 : 
" Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that 
are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the 
weak, be patient toward all men.'''' On the whole, 
Mr. Bonner, if you have any impertinent, disagreea- 
ble, patience-trying people, send them to me. 




BOSTON REMINISCENCES. 

N the opinion of unnumbered men, to have 
been born in Boston must be reckoned 
among the great gifts of fortuije. Next to 
that is a Boston education ; and next to 
that., is the beginning of a Boston education. In this 
third and humble estate we have the good fortune to 
stand ; and although we cannot directly trace any 
part of the good fortune of our life directly back to 
this as a cause, it may yet be the occult and subtile 
influence which has breathed upon our years and 
spread our path with flowers. 



240 EYES AND EARS. 

However that may be, we love, always, to visit this 
curious old city. No other place has so many boy- 
hood associations. A green, healthy, country lad, 
with a round, full, red-cheeked face, at about thir- 
teen years of age we entered this city of marvels. 
We were dazed and dazzled with its sounds and 
sights. We had seen no larger place than Hartford. 
What was that to Boston ! How fast our heart beat, 
on Sunday morning, to hear so many bells clamoring 
together and filling the heavens with calls to worship. 
One solitary bell had we been used to hear ; one 
sweet bell, that rolled out its tones for a mile around 
and more, rising and falling as the wind blew or 
lulled, and having the whole air to itself, to make its 
own music in. This jangle and sweet dissonance of 
Boston bells was among the first things that touched 
the secret spring of fancy, and sent us up into dreams 
and imaginings. But the marvel wellnigh became a 
miracle. We had been told by some one, who loved 
to exercise the ears of right simple and all-believing 
country-boys, that there were so many bells in Boston 
that, when they rang on Sunday mornings, they almost 
played a tune. Judge of our amazement and breath- 
less ardor of delight, when, on the very first Sabbath, 
we heard stealing in, in regular pulse of time, amid 
all the clanging and jangling that filled the air, the 
sweet melody of Days of Absence or Greenville, We 
could not believe our senses ! Yet, yes ! It was even 
so. Blessed city ! in which dwelt so divine a spirit of 
harmony that some airy hand governed the widely 
scattered belfries, and taught the notes which each 
bell carelessly struck to come together in time and 
tune, and march through the air in harmony ! Alas ! 



BOSTON REMINISCENCES. 241 

we had then never heard of chimes; and we were 
painfully disenchanted when the Old North steeple 
was shown to have played this tune all of itself; and 
the conviction came home, that every church preached 
and rung its bell " on its own hook." 

Next to Boston bells were Boston ships. Here first 
we beheld a ship ! We shall never again see anything 
that will so profoundly affect our imagination. We 
stood and gazed upon the ship, and smelt the sea-air, 
and looked far out along the water to the horizon, and 
all that we had ever read of buccaneers, of naval bat- 
tles, of fleets of merchantmen, of explorations into 
strange seas, among rare and curious things, rose up 
in a cloud of mixed and changing fancies, until we 
scarcely knew whether we were in the body or out. 
IIow many hours have we asked and wanted no better 
joy than to sit at the end of the wharf, or on the deck 
of some newly-come ship, and rock and ride on the 
stream of our own unconscious imagination ! We 
went to school to Boston harbor. 

Next to the merchant marine was the navy-yard. 
We stole over to Charlestown almost every week. 
With what awe we walked past the long rows of 
unmounted cannon ! With what exhilaration we 
looked forth from the, mounted sea-battery that looked 
down the harbor, and just waited for some Britisher 
to dare to come in sight ! We have torn any number 
of ships to pieces with those cannon, with imagination 
for our commodore and patriotism for our cannoneer. 
There have been great battles in Boston harbor that 
nobody knows anything about but ourself ! 

Then with what jubilant zeal did we climb all over 
the men-of-war building in the ship-houses, over the 
11 p 



242 EYES AND EARS. 

dismantled ships that lay at the pier-head ! There is 
no gymnasium like a good ship and a parcel of fear- 
less boys of robust strength in full chase of each 
other ! 

Wonderful to relate, also, would be the land engage- 
ments which took place in Boston. There were the 
Fort-Hillers, the West-Enders, the South-Enders, and, 
above all, the Charlestown Pigs. What patriotic 
North-Ender did not resent the indignity done to his 
side of the city by anybody that dared to live on any 
other side ? When these external wars covered their 
glowing coals with the embers of a protecting peace, 
we always had a number of little neighborhood feuds 
which served to keep our hand in. The Prince Street 
boys, the Copp's Hill boys, the Salem-Streeters, the 
Sheafe Street heroes (we lived there), the Bennett- 
Streeters, and, above all, the Ann Street imps ! Well, 
whole volumes would be required to perpetuate the 
fame which in these various fields will perish without 
a record ! 

It was in the Public Latin School of Boston that we 
laid the foundation of that classical lore that must 
have been, methinks, at the bottom of our prosperity ! 
A little leaven is said to leaven the whole lump ; and 
the same may be true of Latin, and in our case it was 
very little. It was in the days of Benjamin Gould 
that we made rabbits of our handkerchief, bravely 
took the rattan on our outstretched palm, and studied 
the grammar with a continual underthought of what 
we would do as soon as school let out ! 

But we are obliged to stop. If all the memorable 
events transpiring under the names of " One-lead-all," 
*' Coram," &c., &c., were to be written, my brief chap? 



OBJECT LESSONS. 24:8 

ter Tvould become a whole book. The very streets 
where our life figured are no more. The canal is 
dry, and carts and drays pass where the old barges 
floated. New land, and whole neighborhoods have 
sprung up in places waste and void in our Boston boy- 
hood. Even the Latin School is no longer to be seen 
in School Street. But, thank fortune. Dock Square 
is about the same, — as old, as shapeless, as crowded, 
and as dirty. But we must take another time to say 
other things of dear old Boston ! 



OBJECT LESSONS. 




NE would almost think that ej/es were an 
arrangement to prevent people from seeing; 
The same thought passed in the mind of 
the old prophet thousands of years ago : 
Et/es have they^ but they see not. It is astonishing to 
observe, both what people do see and what they do 
not. One pair of eyes, for instance, will return from 
a crowded church, and will have seen (by an almost 
supernatural faculty, as it seems to us) every bonnet, 
every ribbon, every dress, every significant look, every 
posture or action, of a thousand people. Our own 
eyes, looking upon the same scene, would have seen 
not one of all these things ! 

One pair of eyes will go through the length of 
Broadway, and see only those who seem to look upon 
the owner of said eyes. Another pair will not have 
seen one person in that long walk, nor have missed 



244 EYES AND EARS. 

one horse that walked, trotted, capered, or steadily 
pulled. 

One man will see all the cliildren, — the sweet, rosy- 
faced, clean ones, gladly ; the ragged and keen-faced 
ones, sadly. One man will see all that Art can ex 
hibit, and another nothing of it all. One man sees 
machines, and all mechanical contrivances ; another 
sees only dresses and showy things. Now and then 
there is a rare head, whose eyes seem to take in 
everytliing, — from a mouse that scuds into a hole, 
up through all varieties of still or active life to the 
very top. And some there be who seem to see noth- 
ing. For all the effect produced upon them, Broad- 
way is as empty as a street in Tadmor. Their eyes 
seem to have been made up with unprepared nerve ; 
so that, like a daguerrean plate without chemical 
coating, nothing acts upon it, and no picture is 
burnt in. 

It is a great pity that we are not taught, in our 
early days, how to see. It is more important than 
reading and writing, than arithmetic or geography. 
In a world of boundless treasures, above, beneath, on 
every side, we walk as if there were but few things 
worth seeing. And even these, when we have looked 
upon them once or twice, we exhaust, and suppose 
that we have really seen them! 

A man shall pass and repass a burdock growing 
near the path which he daily treads going to and re- 
turning from his work. He would laugh if he were 
told that he did not know that familiar plant. And 
yet, in making it, God put upon it and within it a 
hundred things which are worth observation, but 
which this man never sees or suspects. The least 



OBJECT LESSONS. 245 

tilings that come from God's hands are so full, so 
compact of qualities, that they will bear close scru- 
tiny and long study. And we think that the chief 
advantage to be derived from teaching children to 
draiv is not to be found in the pictures made, but 
in the new eyesight gained. This, however, implies 
that they are taught to draw directly from nature, 
and not from copy-books. Let a child study a plant, 
in order to draw it, and he will find out more about 
it in one day than otherwise be would in a lifetime. 
We only glance at things. 

We overlook more than we sec in the things which 
we see most thoroughly. It would be a good exer- 
cise for winter evenings for children, to have placed 
before them a rosebush in a flower-pot, and then let 
each tell what he sees, and keep the list ; and then 
let older eyes do the same ; and then, from all to- 
gether, make out a more complete one ; and laying 
it aside, every day whenever things occur afterwards, 
let them be put down. Thus, the bark, its color, 
texture, changes from youth to age ; the branches, 
their relative positions ; the sub-divisions, the angles 
at which they put off; the leaves, their form ; the 
edges, their texture, color, size, number, health, thick- 
ness ; the difference between the upper and lower 
surface, etc., etc. These and such like things will 
soon let one know how little the untrained eye sees, 
and how much there is to be seen ! 

The eye is susceptible of more training than per- 
haps any other of the senses. Fineness of sight, 
length of vision, comprehensiveness, or the number 
of things taken in at once, and rapidity, — these may 
be so far developed, that the educated eye is as far 



246 EYES AND EARS. 

above the uneducated as a refined and cultivated 
mind is beyond a savage one. Houdin, the great 
French necromancer, relates the practice of himself 
and son, in preparing for one part of their jugglery. 
They trained their eyes to take in at a glance, from 
a shop-window, from a store full of varieties, from 
the face of books in a library, the greatest number 
of things. They came to such perfection, that in 
simply walking past a library-case they could, after- 
ward, tell you nearly every book on its shelves, and 
its relative position. Their eyes seemed to be acted 
upon in a manner not unlike the photographic pro- 
cess. A picture was instantly formed. And, after- 
ward, it rose up before their memories as if the origi- 
nal thing stood before them. Such incidents show 
how little use is yet made of eyes, how little we sus- 
pect their capabilities of education, and how little 
we know of the world we live in, even in its most 
familiar aspects. 



CHARACTER AND REPUTATION. 




HERE are few who do not know the dif- 
ference between character and reputation, 
though there are few who have analyzed 
-' and defined their own ideas. A man's real 
inward habits and mental condition form his charac- 
ter. This will work out to the surface in some de- 
gree, and in some persons much more than in others. 
But the appearance which a man presents to the 



CHARACTER AHD REPUTATION. 247 

world, the outward exhibition, gives him his reputa- 
tion. A man's character is his reaUtj. It is the 
acting and moving force of his being. Reputation is 
the impression which he has made upon other men ; 
it is their thought of him. Our character is always 
in ourselves, but our reputation is in others. 

It is true that, ordinarily, among honest men, the 
two go together. A man who lives out of doors 
among men, and who gives his fellows a fair chance to 
see his conduct, will find that he is accurately meas- 
ured and correctly judged. 

But it sometimes happens that men are much better 
than they have credit for bemg, and as often men 
are much worse than they appear to be ; i. e. men 
may have a reputation either better or worse than 
their character. Thus, there are many men who are 
reputed to be hard, severe, stern, who at heart are 
full of all kindness, and would go farther and fare 
harder to serve a friend or to relieve a real case of 
trouble than anybody else around them. On the other 
hand, some people are thought to be very gentle, very 
sweet in manners ; all smiles, promises, and politeness, 
but at heart they are cold and selfish. Character is 
bad and reputation good in such cases. 

It is quite easy for a man to get himself a reputa- 
tion. He has only to practise upon the imagination 
and credulity of the public. If he takes pleasure in 
being thought better than he is, if he chooses to live 
m a vain show, if he wears a mask, and his life is 
occupied in covering up his real feelings by feigned 
and false ones, he may have a measure of success. 

But the same amount of labor and care which gives 
liim but a flimsy credit, and which would fall before 



248 EYES AND EAES. 

the least scrutiny or severity of test, would give him 
a substantial reality. He labors as hard for a sham 
as would suffice to give him a truth. 

Indeed, it is easier to build a character than to sus- 
tain a false reputation. Once let a man's habits be 
laid, and solidly laid, in truth, honor, and virtue, and 
the more the man is tried, the more he profits by it. 
Such men are revealed to the world by misfortunes. 
The troubles which threaten them only end in letting 
people know how strong and real and good they are. 

But when a man has learned to live upon a mere 
show, practising upon others with decent appearances, 
he will find that his reputation, good in fair weather, 
will be good for nothing in storms and trials. And 
then, when he needs most sympathy and respect, he 
will have tlie least. If it is a little harder to build up 
character than reputation, it is only so in the begin- 
ning. For reputation, like a poorly-built house, will 
cost as much for patching and repairs as would have 
made it thorough at first. 

Besides, an honorable soul ought to be ashamed of 
credit which lie does not deserve. One hardly knows 
how to interpret a nature that can deliberately take 
praises for things which he knows do not belong to 
him. This is particularly true of young men. A 
man may grow insincere through long temptation and 
the corruption of life. But what shall we think of a 
man that begins life on a lie ? who deliberately sets 
out to build up a reputation without caring for his 
character ? 



GOOD-NATUKE. 249 



GOOD-NATUKE. 




F there be one thing for which a man should 
be more grateful than another, it is the pos- 
session of good-nature. I do not consider 
him good-tempered who has no temper at 
all. A man ought to have spirit, strong, earnest, and 
capable of great indignation. We like to hear a man 
thunder, once in a while, if it is genuine, and in the 
right way for a right man. When a noble fellow is 
brought into contact with mean and little ways, and 
is tempted by unscrupulous natures to do unworthy 
things ; or when a great and generous heart perceives 
the wrong done by lordly strength to shrinking, unpro- 
tected weakness ; or where a man sees the foul mis- 
chiefs that sometimes rise and cover the public welfare 
like a thick cloud of poisonous vapors, — we like to 
hear a man express himself with outburst and glori- 
ous anger. It makes us feel safer to know that there 
are such men. We respect human nature all the 
more, to know that it is capable of such feelings. 

But just these men are best capable of good-nature. 
These are the men upon whom a sweet justice in 
common things, and a forbearance toward men in all 
the details of life, and a placable, patient, and cheer- 
ful mind sit with peculiar grace. 

Some men are much helped to do this by a kind of 
bravery born with them. Some men are good-natured 
because they are benevolent, and always feel in a 
sunny mood ; some, because they liave such vigor and 
robust health that care flies off from them, and they 
11* 



250 EYES AND EARS. 

really cannot feel nettled and worried ; some, becanso 
a sense of character keeps them from all things un- 
becoming manliness ; and some, from an overflow of 
what may be called in part animal spirits, and in part, 
also, hopeful and cheerful dispositions. But whatever 
be the cause or reason, is there anything else that so 
much blesses a man in human life as this voluntary 
or involuntary good-nature? Is there anything else 
that converts all things so much into enjoyment to 
him ? And then what a glow and hght lie carries 
with him to otliers ! Some men come upon you like 
a cloud passing over the sun. You do not know what 
ails you, but you feel cold and chilly while they are 
about, and need an extra handful of coal on the fire 
whenever they tarry long. Others rise upon you like 
daylight. How many times does a cheerful and hope- 
ful physician cure his patients by what lie carries in 
his heart and face, more than by what he has in his 
medical case ! How often does the coming of a happy- 
hearted friend lift you up out of deep despondency, 
and, before you are aware, inspire you with hope and 
cheer. What a gift it is to make all men better and 
happier without knowing it ! We don't suppose that 
flowers know how sweet they are. We have watched 
them. But as far as we can find out their thoughts, 
flowers are just as modest as they are beautiful. 

These roses before me, salfataine, lamarque, and 
saff'rano, with their geranium leaves (rose) and car- 
nations and abutilon, have made me happy for a day. 
Yet they stand huddled together in my pitcher with- 
out seeming to know my thoughts of them, or the gra- 
cious work which they are doing ! And how much 
more is it to have a disposition that carries with it, 



APPLE-PIE. 



251 



involuntarily, sweetness, calmness, courage, hope, and 
happiness, to all who are such ? Yet this is the por- 
tion of good-nature in a real, large-minded, strong- 
iiatured man ! When it has made him happy it has 
scarcely begun its office ! 

In this world, where there is so much real sorrow, 
and so much unnecessary grief of fret and worry ; 
where burdens are so heavy and the way so long ; 
where men stumble in rough paths, and so many 
push them down rather than help them up ; where 
tears are as common as smiles, and hearts ache so 
easily, but are poorly fed on higher joys, how grate- 
ful ought we to be that God sends along, here and 
there, a natural heart-singer, — a man whose nature 
is large and luminous, and who, by his very carriage 
and spontaneous actions, calms, cheers, and helps his 
fellows. God bless the good-natured, for they bless 
everybody else ! 



APPLE-PIE. 




OW often people use language without the 
slightest sense of its deep, interior mean- 
ing ! Thus, no phrase is more carelessly 



-' or frequently used than the saying, " Apple- 
pie orderT How few who say so reflect at the time 
upon either apple-pie or the true order of apple-pie ! 
Perhaps they have been reared without instruction. 
They may have been born in families that were igno- 
rant of apple-pie ; or who were left to the guilt of 



252 EYES AND EARS. 

calling two tough pieces of half-cooked dough, with a 
thin streak of macerated dried apple between them, 
of leather color, and of taste and texture not unbe- 
coming the same, — an apple-pie! But from such 
profound degradation of ideas we turn away with 
gratitude and humility, that one so unworthy as we 
should have been reared to better things. 

We are also affected with a sense of regret for 
duty unperformed ; for great as have been the benefits 
received, we have never yet celebrated as we ought 
the merits of apple-pie. That reflection shall no 
longer cast its shadow upon us, 

" Henry, go down cellar, and bring me up some 
Spitzenbergs." Tlie cellar was as large as the whole 
house, and the house was broad as a small pyramid. 
The north side was windowless, and banked up out- 
side with frost-defying tan-bark. The south side had 
windows, festooned and frescoed with the webs of spi- 
ders, that wove their tapestries over every corner in 
the neighborhood, and, when no flies were to be had, 
ate up each other, as if they were nothing but politi- 
cians, instead of being lawful and honorable arachni' 
dee. On the east side stood a row of cider-barrels ; for 
twelve or twenty barrels of cider were a fit provision 
for the year, — and what was not consumed for drink 
was expected duly to turn into vinegar, and was then 
exalted to certain hogsheads kept for the purpose. 
But along the middle of the cellar were the apple- 
bins ; and when the season had been propitious, there 
were stores and heaps of Russets, Greenings, Seek- 
nofurthers, Pearmains, Gilliflowers, Spitzenbergs, and 
many besides, nameless, but not virtueless. Thence 
selecting, we duly brought up the apples. Some peo- 



APPLE-?IE. 253 

pie think anything will do for pies. But the best for 
eating are the best for cooking. Who would make 
jelly of any other apple, that had the Porter? who 
would bake or roast any other sweet apple, that had 
the Ladies^ Sweeting', — unless, perhaps, the Talman 
Siveet ? and who would put into a pie any apple but 
Spitzenberg', that had that ? Off with their jackets ! 
Fill the great wooden bowl with the sound rogues ! 
And now, cook ! which shall it be ? For at this 
point the roads diverge, and though they all come 
back at length to apple-pie, it is not a matter of indif- 
ference which you choose. There is, for example, 
one made without under-crust, in a deep plate, and 
the apples laid in, in full quarters ; or the apples 
being stewed are beaten to a mush, and seasoned, and 
put between the double paste ; or tliey are sliced thin 
and cooked entirely within the covers; or they are 
put without seasoning into their bed, and when baked, 
the upper lid is raised, and the butter, nutmeg, cinna- 
mon, and sugar are added ; the whole well mixed, 
and the crust returned as if nothing had happened. 

But be careful of the paste ! Let it not be like 
putty, nor rush to the other extreme, and make it so 
flaky that one holds his breath while eating for fear of 
blowing it all away. Let it not be plain as bread, nor 
yet rich like cake. Aim at that glorious medium, in 
which it is tender, without being fugaciously flaky ; 
short, without being too short ; a mild, sapid, brittle 
thing, that lies upon the tongue, so as to let the apple 
strike through and touch the papiUce with a mere 
effluent flavor. But this, like all high art, must be a 
thing of inspiration or instinct. A true cook will 
understand us, and we care not if others do not I 



254 EYES AND EAES. 

Do not suppose that we limit the apple-pie to the 
kinds and methods enumerated. Its capacity in va- 
riation is endless, and every diversity discovers some 
new charm or flavor. It will accept almost every 
flavor of every spice. And yet nothing is so fatal 
to the rare and higher graces of apple-pie as incon- 
siderate, vulgar spicing. It is not meant to be a mere 
vehicle for the exhibition of these spices, in their own 
natures. It is a glorious unity in which sugar gives 
up its nature as sugar, and butter ceases to be butter, 
and each flavorsome spice gladly evanishes from its 
own full nature, that all of them, by a common death, 
may rise into the new life of apple-pie ! Not that 
apple is longer apple ! It, too, is transformed. And 
the final pie, though born of apple, sugar, butter, 
nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon, is like none of these, but 
the compound ideal of them all, refined, purified, 
and by fire fixed in blissful perfection. 

But all exquisite creations are short-lived. The 
natural term of an apple-pie is but twelve hours. It 
reaches its highest state about one hour after it comes 
from the oven, and just before its natural heat has 
quite departed. But every hour afterward is a de- 
clension. And after it is one day old, it is thence- 
forward but the ghastly corpse of apple-pie. 

But while it is yet florescent, white or creamy 
yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along 
the edges, (as if the flavor were so good to itself that 
its own lips watered !) of a mild and modest warmth, 
the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied, the morsels 
of apple neither dissolved nor yet in original sub- 
stance, but hanging as it were in a trance between 
the spirit and the flesh of applehood, then, when 



STKAIGHTENING THE LINES. 255 

dinner is to be served at five o'clock, and you are 
pivotted on the hour of one with a ravening appetite, 
let the good dame bring forth for luncheon an apple- 
pie, with cheese a year old, crumbling and yet moist, 
but not with base fluid, but oily rather ; then, 
blessed man, favored by all the divinities! eat, give 
thanks, and go forth, ^' in apple-pie order ! ^^ 



STRAIGHTENING THE LINES. 




N the northeast side of our little pet farm 
there was, upon survey, found to be a jog, 
or angle. The line did not run from a 
given point straiglit through, but turned 
abruptly west, and then at right angles north. As 
soon as tlie plot of ground was mapped, we conceived 
a dislike to that corner. It looked as if the next lot 
was poking its horns into our sides. We did not 
fancy such an intrusive angle. The more we looked 
at it, the less we liked it. How to straighten our line 
became a very serious problem. To do it by cutting 
off any part of our own acres was not to be thought 
of. To buy more land, when you have enough, would 
be even worse. But who that owns an acre can resist 
the temptation of another acre ? Whether we bought 
or sold is nothing to the reader; but that line is 
straightened^ and there is no jog in our east line, and 
the map looks very well, and we have not lost any 
ground. And we have a little more room for oiir 
orchard ! 



256 EYES AND EAKS. 

Did anybody ever buy a farm without seeing some 
reason for adding a little more to it ? If there is not 
a jog in the line, is there not one in the man's notions ? 
The front is too narrow, and he would widen it ; or 
there is a meadow that ought to belong to the place ; 
or a bit of woodland is just the thing needed ; or a 
muck-swamp would be so good for its contents ; or 
i\\Q stock require that the lot with that ever-flowing 
brook in it should belong to the farm ; or a pasture- 
range on the hill would be so good for the dairy ; 
or that swale would form such a fine carriage ap- 
proach ; or the bit of a hill to the east has the very 
stone that you need for walls or buildings ; or you 
have a slianty and a neighljor whose mind is too free 
and hands too loose in property-matters, and whom 
you can buy away easier than abate as a nuisance ; or 
you want a little more garden, a little more orchard, 
a little more mowing-land or lawn or ornamental 
forest room, or you wish to secure a particularly fine 
prospect ; — in short, you want a little more land. 
There is a mysterious law which makes twenty acres 
much less perfect than twenty-five, and twenty-five 
has a powerful attraction for thirty. A hundred acres 
are never content without fifty more. Five lumdred 
acres complain for want of company, and regard them- 
selves as lonesome without a few hundred acres more. 

There are luidoubtedly cases in which large farms 
are better than small ones. But there are twenty men 
who would grow rich on less than a hundred acres 
where there is one who would on more land. 

A farm is only anotlier name for a chemical labora- 
tory. It is only another way of manufacturing, and 
many men can carry on a small, compact business j 



STRAIGHTENING THE LINES. 257 

which their eye and hand can cover, who have no 
head to plan a complex one, and no skill to superin- 
tend its execution. 

A small place thoroughly wrought is very seldom 
seen. There are very few acres that have ever shown 
what they can do. 

There is one way in which men may increase the 
amount of soil with the utmost advantage, and that is 
vertically. 

A man's lease runs from nadir to zenith. A man 
only sees the surface of what he owns. There is a 
great deal more down below than there is upon the 
top. Now, for many purposes, every inch a man goes 
downward, in cultivation, is equivalent to a foot on 
the surface. A vertical inch is worth more than a 
superficial foot. And it is lawful to increase the size 
of a man's farm by g-oing- under for the ground. 

This is a point very little heeded, even by those who 
expend great sums of money in the improvement and 
ornamentation of their places. A system of drainage 
should be established at a depth of from three and a 
half to four feet. If, then, the ground be stoned and 
enriched to a depth of full three feet, it will be only 
in a good condition for till. Not only crops, but fruit- 
trees and forest and ornamental trees, demand at 
least such a depth. Then one will see tlie fruit of 
his labor in shrubs, vines, trees, and harvests, which 
will make his luck the envy of all lazy men in the 
neighborhood. 

In short, let every man find the crooks in the bot- 
tom lines of his grounds, and spare no pains to take 
these out, and he may be sure that the side lines will 
not give him much trouble. 

Q 



258 EYES AND EAKS. 



TALKING. 




ALKING and laughing are distinguishing 
traits of the human species. No animal 
can laugh, nor, except as a mere mechani- 
cal imitation of sounds, can any animal 
talk. Neither bird nor beast uses articulate speech 
as a means of conveying thought or of expressing 
feeling. This is one of the prerogatives of man. But 
in no other one respect do men differ so much as in 
laughing or talking. Nor are we apt to consider how 
closely these acts are connected with, and the result 
of, the original organization, mental and physical. A 
secretive and cautious man neither talks fluently nor 
laughs readily. Some men's conversation is like the 
ticking of an old-fashioned clock with a long pen- 
dulum, whose measured beats are slow and solemn. 
Once started, they stop for nothing, but drop one word 
regularly after another, to the' end of their methodical 
sentence. If you are yourself quick, versatile, and in a 
hurry withal, you grow intolerably restless under the 
conversation. Your tongue is horse-limbed, and their 
tongues are ox-footed. At the first half-dozen words 
you perceive their meaning, and then the slow-paced 
utterance of it is surplusage. Perhaps it is your 
minister. You cannot tell why he is so tedious. 
What he says is good, and it is well said ; but you 
cannot refrain from wandering thoughts. You are 
mercurial and imaginative, and he is phlegmatic and 
literal. Perhaps it is your schoolmaster, and he bores 
YOU with his solemn and long-drawn repetitions. Or 



TALKING. 259 

you may be a bouncing boy, full of sparkles and 
quips, doomed to stand still and receive the slowly- 
poured admonition or advice. Your nerves rebel. You 
grow unreasonable. You inwardly mutter all sorts 
of harmless objurgations. But Nature is imperative. 

Men of a cautious and secretive turn of mind are 
seldom talkers. And when caution is disproportion- 
ally powerful, a man will sometimes be unable to do 
more than issue here and there parts of sentences. 
He will begin, and stop ; begin again, and soon tie 
up the sentence with a twist of interjected qualifying 
clause ; then again, stopping as if to go back and 
look over what he has said, as a carpenter sights the 
edge of the work which he is fitting ; and, finally, he 
will leave the sentence very much in the shape of a 
bushel of apples poured out in a heap upon the 
ground. And yet we have known such men to be 
very keen in perception, acute in thought,* and shrewd 
in judgment. But it seems as if there were some 
break in the machinery which connects the thinking 
part and the language part of the mind. And their 
conversation resembles a tune played upon an old 
piano, half of whose keys do not connect with the 
wires, and give no sound. 

Some men use words as riflemen do bullets. They 
say little. The few words used go right to the mark. 
They let you talk, and guide with their eye and face, 
on and on, till what you say can be answered in a 
word or two, and then they lance out a sentence, 
pierce the matter to the quick, and are done. You 
never know where you stand with them. Your con- 
versation falls into their mind, as rivers fall into deep 
chasms, and are lost from sight by its depth and 



260 EYES AND EARS. 

darkness. They will sometimes surprise you with a 
few words, that go right to the mark like a gunshot, 
and then they are silent again, as if they were re- 
loading. 

In this class must be reckoned men who alternate 
between drought and freshet. Sometimes for days 
or hours they are all dried up. Suddenly they will 
send forth an immense tide of speech that quite 
sweeps you away. We have seen men like the far- 
famed Iceland Geysers, who never talked till they 
were mad, and then spouted terribly. It is said ol 
these northern hot-springs, that if you throw a stone 
or tuft of grass into their throats, you soon bring up 
their torrents of scalding water at a most furious rate. 

In strong contrast with such are the smooth, oily 
talkers whom we occasionally meet, whose voices are 
soft and sweet, and who have an inimitable talent 
in flowing on, without let or hinderance, in the most 
genial and soothing manner. They steal upon your 
ear and lull your temper ; they come upon you with 
a kind of charge that resembles a May atmosphere 
after March winds. One cannot remember what they 
say, but at the time the charm amounts almost to a 
fascination. One word takes hold of another with 
such a soft touch, and one sentence moves into an- 
other, as drops of water in a stream move indis- 
tinguishably upon each other. 

There seems no reason to doubt that a propensity 
to talk is as much a natural gift as a propensity to 
invent or to construct. We have known persons 
who neither cared whether you listened to them or 
heeded their utterances. A good woman, we once 
knew, who talked as rivers run, by the necessity 



TALKING. 261 

of some inward gravitation toward outflow. She 
would begin with morning, talk, talk, talk, in a 
cheery, changeable way, branching off in this direc- 
tion or that, running off on this analogy, or toward 
that suggestion all breakfast time, all the while the 
table was being cleared. One by one the people in 
the room — who had learned to listen to her no 
more than we hear the ticking of a clock or any 
other continuous sound — would go out, till the 
last one had left. It was all the same to her ; a low 
murmur might be heard in the room, by those 
adjoining it, for the good soul was pleasantly talk- 
ing all alone. When you entered again she merely 
continued, and so on all day and evening. It was 
a double mystery how she found strength and ma- 
terial for such a perennial flow by daylight. But, 
once impressed with the inevitableness of her tongue, 
you next wondered what miraculous power bound it 
to silence at night. It was like a brook from the gla- 
ciers, which flows all day while the sun shines on the 
ice, but is sealed up by frosts at night. 

But the subject is vast. We have touched but the 
external edge. The tongue of man cannot be de- 
scribed in an article. It has deep inward relations. 
It has national and political bearings. It is the silver 
bell of the soul, or the iron and crashing haAmer 
of the anvil. It is like a magician's wand, full of 
all incantation and witchery ; or it is a sceptre in a 
king's hand, and sways men with imperial authority. 

The pen is the tongue of the hand, — a silent 
utterer of words for the eye, — the unmusical sub- 
stitute of the literal tongue, which is the soul's 
prophet, the heart's minister, and the interpreter of 
the understanding. • 



262 EYES AND EAES. 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 




HE growth of good taste, the extraordinary 



faciHties for obtaining art-creations in some 
form, and the amount of sound art-reading 
which has been spread into all society by 
the invaluable agency of newspapers, and which has 
educated and stimulated the feelings and judgment of 
the common citizens of our century, have begun an 
era of art such as the world never saw, and could 
never see m any other condition of society. 

There has been a great deal said about the decline 
of Art in our age ; a great deal of mourning after the 
great days of the masters of the sixteenth century, 
and a great deal of unwarrantable regret that govern- 
ments do not more encourage Art. 

We do not believe that Art has declined ; we do 
not believe that the sixteenth century was any better 
served by the ministry of Art than ours is ; and we 
do not believe that government should be appealed to 
to foster Art. Whatever incidental encouragement it 
can give should be freely and generously conferred. 
But it is the common people that must in our times 
be looked to. From them spriiigs all political influ- 
ence. We look to them for the maintenance of all 
our civil and religious institutions. We look to them 
for education, for reformation, for all civic public 
spirit ; and it is the increasing faith of our times that 
an intelligent common people are better promoters of 
all the great interests of society than can be govern- 
ments or hierarchies. This is just as true of Art as it 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 263 

is of Religion, Education, Commerce, or industrial 
pursuits. Governments may help. But the grand 
nourishing influence must come from public senti- 
ment. 

If Art be regarded as a mere decorator, to give 
us only grotesque or graceful arabesques, or close 
imitations of natural objects, or mere graded or con- 
trasted colors, in Oriental profusion, it would be 
scarcely worth our while to inquire in what age it 
had flourished most. 

There is undoubtedly a pleasure of the senses in 
the simple effect of form and color, and in adroit 
imitations. But it is a gratification in which the 
intellect and the higher feelings can scarcely partici- 
pate. What would be the condition of learning and 
literature in an age in which the paper, the type, the 
binding of books, were deemed more important than 
the meanings and truths contained ? But just that is 
done when pictures are valued for their mechanical 
dexterity and the impression on the senses. 

But Art is a pictorial language. It must discourse 
in every age of the things which belong to that age, 
or to the purposes which a Divine Providence is de- 
veloping in any period of time. In the far-famed six- 
teenth century, ideas found but a slow and very imper- 
fect diffusion. The poet sang, the orator spoke, the 
churchman and professor taught. But there was no 
printing-press, no popular assembly, no common peo- 
ple reading daily newspapers, and made familiar with 
all that the noblest minds thought, or great hearts 
felt, or skilful hands executed. The most public 
things would seem to our day almost secluded. 

In such a time, Architecture had a moral function 



2G4 EYES AND EARS. 

that it can never have again. We shall never have 
cathedrals, because we liave better ways of expressing 
religious yearnings. We build up a great Common 
People, in thrift, honor, purity, faith, and piety, and 
they express the religious ideas of an age better than 
can the costliest and most skilfully wrought architec- 
ture. Meanwhile, Architecture occupies itself with 
another work. It now builds five hundred parish 
churches instead of one metropolitan cathedral. It 
builds fewer palaces, but more mansions. It builds 
fewer marvels, but more good houses. In short, 
Architecture is no longer in the hands of government, 
of the Church, or of mere wealth. It has become the 
servant of the common people. It has worked out 
the aristocratic idea, and is now working out the true 
democratic idea. And this work is in nature diffu- 
sive and detailed, not massed and magnificent. The 
world never saw so much architectural progress as 
now. Men fail to see it, because all men look at Art 
from the aristocratic stand-point, and do not sympa- 
thize with' the moral element which it serves in our 
times. 

The same thing is true of Painting. Once it was 
the creature of the state. This in Athens was so 
eminently the case, that not until after the decline of 
Greece began was Art regarded as permissible in the 
citizen's dwelling. It was a sacred language, used 
only in the temples of religion or in state build- 
ings. The wealthiest men, the greatest statesmen, 
and the artists themselves, had neither paintings 
nor statues in their houses. Indeed, the private 
houses of Athens were small, stinking nuisances, long 
after the city was the admiration of the world for its 
public buildings. 



• ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 265 

In later days — those very days so much lauded, 
when Raffaelle, M. Angelo, Leonardo, Correggio, Ti- 
tian, Paul Veronese, &c., lived — what interests did 
Art serve ? It was aristocratic and hierarchic. It 
belonged to the palace and the church. It had al- 
most no s^^mpathy with the common people. It was 
large, noble, magnificent. It did a much-needed work. 
But it completed that work. It served one element 
as long as the world needed that it should. Its 
mission was then in advance. The earlier and ruder 
forms of society are the monarchic. The later and 
riper developments are republican in spirit, whatever 
be the form. Art was called down from great ceilings 
and vast walls, from churches and palaces, because 
the citizen was building his house, and it is a higher 
function for Art to serve the whole citizenship than 
to serve their rulers. The men governed are more 
noble and more valuable than they that govern them. 
Men are nearer to God than governments. 

It is in this direction tliat Art has been steadily 
inclining. It has had less and less to do for exclu- 
sive wealth, for institutions and for governments, 
and more for the common people. And it is yet to 
perform its highest offices in this interest. There 
is a life to be expressed, there are truths to be repre- 
sented there are exquisite experiences of joy and of 
sorrow, there is a whole realm of household life, 
of moral life, of common occupation, which, as yet, 
has been imperfectly served or expressed. 

The true artist is he who perceives in common 
things a meaning of beauty or sentiment which 
coarser natures fail to detect. The artist is not an 
imitator who makes common things on canvas look 

12 



266 EYES AND EARS. 

just like common things anywhere else. Artist is 
Interpreter. He teaches men by opening through 
imitation the message of deeds, events, or objects, 
so that they rise from the senses, where before they 
had exclusively presented themselves, and speak to 
the higher feelings. A man who sees in Nature 
nothing but materiality, is no more an artist than he 
is a musician who, in one of Beethoven's symphonies, 
hears only noise. 

And we deem this mission of Art as much more 
noble and morally grand than that which it hitherto 
served, as mankind are more noble and grand than 
their accidental rulers and their harnessing institu- 
tions. Thus far, we have but laid down the principal 
thought. Its applications would require a much 
larger space. 



SLIDING DOWN HILL. 




jHERE is nothing in the tropics that can 
console a man doomed to dwell there for 
the loss of northern winters. Monkeys and 
humming-birds, gorgeous flowers and gigan- 
tic vegetation, insects, reptiles, luscious fruits which 
you cannot eat without a ^cholera, sweltering nights 
and roasting days ! Deliver us from the intolerable 
delights of tropical luxury! 

But a northern winter is full of bracing joys. 
Indoors all is ruddy and social, and out of doors all 
is energy and manly joy ! A man who has blood 
and vital spirits glories in the cold of winter. Bujt 



SLIDING DOWN HILL. 267 

of all its sports, what one can claim superiority over 
coasting-; or, as in our boyhood days it was called, 
sliding down hill ! 

Long before we attained the age of a sled, two 
barrel-staves, fastened together by the knowing work- 
man, served an excellent purpose, and required no 
mean skill in sitting and steering. A slight mistake 
in balancing, and the boy and staves changed places, 
the boy under and the sliding machine a-top, — and 
then gradually rolling into a promiscuous heap, out 
of which came some ripping remarks — not made 
by the sled. 

Next came the glory of full and real sledsMp, — a 
sled with runners, and iron or steel shod ; a sled 
painted and lettered ! With that we defied the ther- 
mometer, and set our faces against, the north-wind ! 
And how the long hill, a full half-mile, is sought, 
not all of a gentle slope, nor yet too steep, but prop- 
erly made up, as all hills should be, with a line grad- 
ual beginning, then a pitch quite steep, then an- 
other long middle slope, and a jounce here, a rullock 
there, a sweep yonder around a point, and a fetch- 
ing-up place right along the river ! On such a hill- 
top, with a glorious sled, well-muffled and mittened, 
the boy seats himself on his steed, prouder than ever 
sat king apon his throne ! Away he goes, with nim- 
ble feet reaching out before him (for a sled carries 
its rudder at the bow), and whose -heels, with skilful 
touch, steer the flying machine. See him make a 
leap over the rullock, lifted clear into the air, and 
coming down with a jounce that made everything 
crack — but the boy ! Boys have springs inside of 
them, under every muscle, on all sides of each bone, 



268 EYES AND EARS. 

and come down with a springy bound that cars and 
carriages may envy, but cannot hope to attain ! 

None of your belly-flounders ! This lying down 
on a sled, like a buckwheat cake on a griddle ; or 
that sideway sitting, on the hind end of it, with one 
leg cork-screwed out behind, for steering, are not the 
thing. They are not orthodox. They savor of a 
compliance with weakness and timidity. A real boy 
should sit upon his sled fair and square, with his 
face to his work, and ready to meet all difficulties 
with his breast to them ! 

Nor let any one decry the long tramp up hill that 
follows this fierce flight downward. What if it is 
long, the sled hanging behind, the way slippery, and 
withal some peril of those avalanches of other boys 
that come roaring and whirling down ? The going 
up is still an indispensable part of the epic. It is 
the dark that gives power to the high light. The 
up makes, by contrast, the very glory of the down. 
Besides, as it is appointed to every hen, when she 
has laid an egg, to enter at large into the merits of 
the performance, and to tell the barnyard and neigh- 
borhood her opinion of that last Qgg, and, doubtless, 
if we but understood the true interior meaning of 
cackle^ to say, — ''Here's an Qgg for omelettes, ome- 
lettes, omelettes ; good also for cakes, cakes, cakes ; 
the very soul of custard, custard, custard ; good raw, 
good roasted, good boiled, good fried. Good soft or 
hard; — good eggs, good eggs, very good eggs," — so 
(let me see, that intolerable hen has confused this 
sentence so that we don't just see how to tie it 
together, — ah, here it is ! ) as this hen, having done 
all the above, discourses of it (as per above transla- 



SLIDING DOWN HILL. 269 

tion), so the boy occupies the long ascent in declar- 
ing the skill, speed, and wonderful daring of his 
descent, and is vehement in setting forth what liked 
to have happened, and the thing which he almost 
did! 

We never see the snow on the ground, old as we 
are, that we do not feel the very spirit of the sled 
again ! And now, an old man, we would if we could 
mount and plunge down the hill again. Though a 
man's hair is as white as the snow under his feet, he 
need not be ashamed of a voyage on a sled ! 

Tliere is but one city in this nation, that we know 
of, that is civilized, and that city is New Bedford. 
One winter, ^ot long ago, when we were there, we 
found a long street refused to horse-vehicles, and set 
apart to sleds. The Selectmen, or whatever their 
names were, at the public expense carted on snow 
where the track was worn ; iced it by water thrown 
on overnight; stationed a band of music there; had 
torches lit and placed along the sides ; and the gener- 
ous people, catching the spirit, illumined their houses, 
and this preparation was then thrown open to men, 
women, and children. That city is civilized. That 
part of the millennium which consists in* sliding 
down hill we believe will begin first in New Bedford. 



270 EYES AND EAES. 



GAMBLING. 




HE universal prevalence of this vice is a 
reason for parental vigilance ; and a reason 
of remonstrance from the citizen, the parent, 
the minister of the gospel, the patriot, and 
the press, I propose to trace its opening, describe its 
subjects, and detail its effects. 

A young man, proud of freedom, anxious to exert 
his manhood, has tumbled his Bible and sober books 
and letters of counsel into a dark closet. He has 
learned various accomplishments, — to flirt, to boast, 
to swear, to fight, to drink. He has let every one of 
these chains be put around him, upon the solemn 
promise of Satan that he would take them off when- 
ever he wished. Hearing of the artistic feats of emi- 
nent gamblers, he emulates them. So he ponders 
the game. He teaches what he has learned to his 
shopmates, and feels himself their master. As yet he 
has never played for stakes. It begins thus : Peeping 
into a bookstore, he watches till the sober customers 
go out;«then slips in, and with assumed boldness, not 
concealing his shame, he asks for cards, buys them, 
and hastens out. The first game is to pay for the 
cards. After the relish of playing for a stake, no 
game can satisfy them without a stake. A few nuts 
are staked ; then a bottle of wine ; an oyster-supper. 
At last they can venture a sixpence in actual money, 
— just for the amusement of it. I need go no fur- 
ther — whoever wishes to do anything with the lad 
can do it now. If properly plied, and gradually led, 



GAMBLING. 271 

he will go to any length, and stop only at the gallows. 
Do you doubt it ? let us trace him a year or two fur- 
ther on. 

With his father's blessing, and his mother's tears, 
the young man departs from home. He has received 
his patrimony, and embarks for life and independence. 
Upon his journey he rests at a city ; visits the " school 
of morals"; lingers in more suspicious places; is 
seen by a sharper ; and makes his acquaintance. The 
knave sits by him at dinner ; gives him the news of 
the place, and a world of advice ; cautions him 
against sharpers ; inquires if he has money, and 
cliarges him to keep it secret ; offers himself to make 
with him the rounds of the town, and secure him 
from imposition. At length, that he may see all, he 
is taken to a gaming-house, but, with appareift kind- 
ness, warned not to play. He stands by to see the 
various fortunes of the game : some, forever losing ; 
some, touch what number they will, gaining piles of 
gold. Looking is thirst where wine is free. A glass 
is taken ; another of a better kind ; next the best the 
landlord has, and two glasses of that. A change 
comes over the youth ; his exhilaration raises his 
courage and lulls his caution. Gambling seen seems 
a different thing from gambling painted by a pious 
father ! Just then his friend remarks that one might 
easily double his money by a few ventures, but that it 
were, perhaps, prudent not to risk. Only this was 
needed to fire his mind. What! only prudence be- 
tween me and gain ? Then that shall not be long ! 
He stakes ; he wins. Stakes again ; wins again. 
Glorious ! I am the lucky man that is to break the 
bank ! He stakes, and wins again. His pulse races ; 



272 EYES AND EARS. 

his face burns ; his blood is up, and fear gone. He 
loses ; loses again ; loses all his winnings ; loses more. 
But fortune turns again ; he wins anew. He has 
now lost all self-command. Gains excite him, and 
losses excite him more. He doubles his stakes ; then 
trebles them, — and all is swept. He rushes on, puts 
up his whole purse, and loses the whole ! Then he 
would borrow ; no man will lend. He is desperate, 
he will fight at a word. He is led to the street, and 
thrust out. The cool breeze which blows upon his 
fevered cheek wafts the slow and solemn stroke of 
the clock, — one, — two, — three, — four ; four of the 
morning- ! Quick work of ruin ! — an innocent man 
destroyed in a night ! He staggers to his hotel, re- 
members as he enters it that he has not even enough 
to pay* his bill. It now flashes upon him that his 
friend, who never had left him for an hour before, 
had stayed behind where his money is, and doubtless 
is laughing over his spoils. His blood boils with rage. 
But at length comes up the remembrance of home ; 
a parent's training and counsels for more than twenty 
years destroyed in a night ! " Good God ! what a 
wretch I have been ! I am not fit to live. I cannot 
go home. I am a stranger here. that I were 
dead ! that I had died before I knew this guilt, 
and were lying where my sister lies ! God ! 
God ! my head will burst with agony ! " He stalks 
his lonely room with an agony which only the young 
heart knows in its first horrible awakening to remorse, 
— when it looks despair full in the face, and feels its 
hideous incantations tempting him to suicide. Sub- 
diTcd at length by agony, cowed and weakened by 
distress, he is sought again by those who plucked him. 



WINTER BEAUTY. 273 

Cunning to subvert inexperience, to raise the evil 
passions, and to allay the good, they make him their 
pliant tool. 

Farewell, young man ! I see thy steps turned to 
that haunt again ! I see hope lighting thy face ; but 
it is a lurid light, and never came from heaven. Stop 
before that threshold ! — turn, and bid farewell to 
home! — farewell to innocence ! — farewell to venera- 
ble father and aged mother ! — the next step shall part 
thee from them all forever. And now henceforth be 
a mate to thieves, a brother to corruption. Thou hast 
made a league with death, and unto death shalt 
thou go. 



WINTER BEAUTY. 




T is the impression of many that only in 
summer, including spring and autumn of 
course, is the country desirable as a resi- 
^ dence. The country in summer, and the 
city for the winter. It is trtie, that the winter gives 
attractions to the city, in endless meetings, lectures, 
concerts, and indoor amusements. But it is not true 
that tlie country loses all interest when the leaves 
are shed and the grass is gone. On the contrary, 
to one who has learned how to use his senses and 
his sensibilities, there are attractions in the winter of 
a peculiar kind, and pleasures which can be reaped 
only then. The disadvantages of wet roads, unpaved 
sidewalks, plashy fields, are felt more by an invalid 
than by persons of robust health. 

12^ R 



274 ^ EYES AND EARS. 

It seems to me that winter comes in to relieve the 
year of satiety. The mind grows sated with green- 
ness. After eight or nine months of hixuriant 
growths, the eye grows accustomed to vegetation. 
To be sure, we never are less tlian pleased with the 
wide prospect ; with forms of noble trees, with towns 
and meadows, and with the whole aspect of nature. 
But it is the pleasure of one pampered. We lose 
the keen edge of hunger. The eye enjoys without 
the rehsh of newness. We expect to enjoy. Every- 
thing loses surprise. Of course, the sky is blue, 
the grass succulent, the fields green, the trees umbra- 
geous, the clouds silent and mysterious. They were 
so yesterday, they are so to-day, they will be so to- 
morrow, next week, next month. In short, the mind 
does not cease to feel the charm of endless growths, 
but needs variety, change of diet, less of perpetual 
feasting, and something of the blessings of a fast. 
This winter gives. It says to us : You have had too 
much. You are luxurious and dainty. You need 
relief and change of diet. 

The cold blue of the sky, the cold gray of rocks, 
the sober warmth of bi*bwns and russets, take the 
place of more gorgeous colors. If, now, one will 
accept this change in the tone of nature, after a time 
a new and relishful pleasure arises. The month 
formed by the last fortnight of November and the 
first two weeks of December is, to me, the saddest 
of the year. It most nearly produces the sense of 
desolateness and dreariness of any portion of the 
year. From the hour that the summer begins to 
shorten its days, and register the increasing change 
along the horizon, over which the sun sets, farther 



WINTER BEAUTY. 275 

and farther toward the south, we have a genial and 
gentle sadness. But sadness belongs to all very 
deep joys. It is almost as needful to the perfect- 
ness of joy, as shadows in landscapes are to the 
charm of the picture. Then, too, comes the fading 
out of flowers, — each variety in its turn saying, 
"Farewell till next summer." Scarcely less sug- 
gestive of departing summer are the new-comers, the 
late summer golden-rod, the asters, and all autum- 
nal flowers. Long experience teaches us that these 
are the latest blossoms that fall from the sun's lap, 
and next to them is snow. By association we already 
see white in the yellow and blue. Then, too, birds 
are thinking of other things. No more nests, no 
more young, no more songs, except signal-notes and 
rally ing-calls ; for they are evidently warned, and 
go about their little remaining daily business as per- 
sons who expect every hour to depart to a distant 
land. It is scarcely ever that we see birds go. They 
are here to-day, and gone to-morrow. They disap- 
pear without observation. The fields are empty and 
silent. It seems as if the winds had blown them 
away with the leaves. The first sight of northern 
wa'ter-fowl, far up in air, retreating from Labra- 
dor and the short Arctic summer, is always to us 
like the declaration : Summer is gone, winter is 
behind us, it will soon be upon you. At last come 
the late days of November. All is gone, — frosts 
reap and glean more sharply every night. A few 
weeks bring earnest winter. Then begin to dawn 
other delights. The bracing air, the clean snow- 
paths, the sled and sleigh, the revelation of forms 
that all summer were grass-hidden ; the sharp-out- 



276 EYES AND EARS. 

lined hills lying clear upon the sky ; the exquisite 
tracery of trees ; especially of all siicli trees as that 
dendral child of God, the elm, whose branches are 
carried out into an endless complexity of fine lines 
of spray, and which stands up in winter showing in 
its whole anatomy that all its summer shade was 
founded upon the most substantial reality. 

In winter, too, particularly in the latter periods of 
it, the extremities of shrubs and branches begin to 
take on ruddy hues, or purplish browns, and the 
eye knows that these are the first faint blushes of 
coming summer. Amidst snows and storms and 
sharp severity of frosts, the lover detects the color 
of his coming mistress. Now, too, we find how 
beautiful are the mosses in the woods ; and under 
them we find solitary green leaves, that have 
laughed all winter because they had outwitted the 
frost. Wherever flowing springs gush from sheltered 
spots looking s(yuth, one will find many green edges, 
young grass, and some few tougher leaves. Now, 
too, in still days, the crow sings heavily through the 
air, cawing with a pleasing harshness. For dieting 
has performed its work. Your appetite is eager. A 
little now pleases you more than abundance did 'in 
August. Every tiny leaf is to you like a cedar of 
Lebanon. 

All thdse things are unknown to dwellers in cities. 
It is nothing to them that a robin appeared for the 
first time yesterday morning, or that a bluebird sang 
over against the house. Some new prima donna 
exhausts their admiration. They are yet studying 
laces, and do not care for the fringe of swamps, for 
the first catkins of the willow. They are still cov- 



WINTER BEAUTY. 277 

eting the stores of precious stones at the jewellers, 
and do not care for my ruby buds, and red dogwood, 
and scarlet winter berries, and ground pine, and par- 
tridge-berry leaves. 

There is one sight of the country at about this 
time of the year — the first of March — that few 
have seen, or else they have passed it by as if it 
were not worthy of record. I mean the drapery of 
rocks in gorges, or along precipitous sides of hills or 
mountains. The seams of rock are the outlets of 
springs. The water trickling through is seized by 
the frost, and held fast in white enchantment. Every 
day adds to the length of the ice drapery. And as 
the surface is ovej'laid by new issuings, it is furred 
and fretted with silver-white chasings, the most ex- 
quisite. Thus one may find a succession, in a single 
gorge, of extraordinary ice-curtains, and pendent 
draperies, of varying lengths, of every fantastic form, 
of colors varying by thickness, or by the tinge of 
earth or rock shining through them. 

In my boyhood I used to wander along these fairy 
halls imagining them to be now altars in long white 
draperies ; now, grand cathedral pillars of white mar- 
ble ; then, long tapestries chased in white with ara- 
besques and crinkled vines and leaves. Sometimes 
they seemed like gigantic bridal decorations, or like 
the robes of beings vast and high, hung in their 
wardrobes while they slept. But wiiatever fancy 
interpreted them, or whether they were looked upon 
with two good, sober, literal eyes, they were, and 
still are, among the most delightful of winter exhibi- 
tions to those who are wise enough to search out the 
hidden beauty of winter in the country. 



278 EYES AND EARS. 




STREET CRIES^ AND ORATORS' VOICES. 

OBERT BONNER:— I am reminded of my 
duty, by hearing the boys in the streets cry- 
ing out, " New York Ledger ! " with a saucy 
tone, as much as to say, " Have you got 
your ears open, sir ? D' ye see, sir ? " Did you ever 
take notice of the voices of men and boys that get 
their living by their lusty crying? A public speaker 
may well envy them. Public speakers seldom have 
great advantage over other men in voice, power, or 
quality. It is rare, rather than common, among the 
tens of thousands whose offices require public speak- 
ing, to hear a man of a commanding voice, or to 
find a speaker whose tones are smooth, unlabored, 
and yet penetrating. Some men are boisterous and 
vociferous, that they may give force to their sen- 
tences. But that gun does not carry a ball the 
farthest that makes the most noise in going off. The 
crack of a rifle is anything but noisy. Such is the 
want of good voice capital, that men are always 
talking about good speaking-rooms, and the acoustic 
properties of lecture-rooms. But the best of all 
properties in a speaking-hall is, a man that knows 
how to speak, and has something to speak with ! 
What does a rooster care for acoustic aids ? He 
mounts a fence lustily, gives a preliminary flap of 
his wings, as if to say, " I could have flown twice 
as high," and then lets off a crow that rings and 
echoes for a mile around. A bull will sound you a 
bass note that would make old Westminster Abbey « 



STREET CRIES AND ORATORS' VOICES. 270 

shake. A crow will caw to you at two miles distance 
without the fear of bronchitis. A dog will bark to 
a whole town without the slightest inconvenience — 
to himself. And yet men who are brought up to 
speaking as the business of their lives cannot make 
themselves heard at a hundred feet distance, or, 
only by exertions that send them home for liniments, 
bandages, and caustic ! 

It does not follow because a bird can fly, that a 
man can, it may be said, and that the vigor of bird 
and beast in vocal organs is no fair analogy for men. 
But it becomes so, when it is observed that men who 
have vigor of body, who live much in the open air, 
and who practise their voice in the free, open out- 
doors, come to have the same resonance and almost 
the same power that is found in animals. A plough- 
boy can be heard over a whole neighborhood ; an 
ox-driver of the old sort needed no horn to let 
people know that he was driving into town. Far 
off his coming sounds. Military men and shipmasters 
attain to great power of propagating sounds. It may 
be said, that, though such persons are able to eject 
single orders, or sentences, they could not sustain 
the fatigue of a continuous delivery for an hour. 

But newsboys, old-clothes men, all street-cryers, 
and, above all, chimney-sweeps, have voices in ex- 
ercise from morning till night, that are full, round, 
and often rich and melodious. There used to be in 
Brooklyn a chimney-sweep whose voice I coveted 
more than his trade or complexion. I was w-iJking 
one day along Orange Street, toward the Heights, when 
%\\Q whole air seemed full and overflowing with a 
Bound as smooth, round, and melodious as an organ 



280 EYES AND EAKS. 

diapason. It fairly rained down for abundance and 
universality. The houses reflected it. The streets 
were channels in which the airy stream flowed. I 
looked in every direction for the cause. No man 
seemed the author. I looked up and down the street, 
turned around to every quarter, — for the sound 
came equally from everywhere, — until at length, 
mounted upon the chimney-top of one of the highest 
houses, sat the fellow like a king on his throne. 
Astride of the stack, lowering or pulling up his 
scraping machine, he was perched like a blackbird 
indeed ; but much more musical ! Ah, did I not 
have to lay fast hold of the commandments, to save 
myself from coveting ? Tliis fellow, without doubt, 
if he ever lived in a pre-existent state, w^as an organ- 
pipe, and the divinities gave him life, and changed 
his bellows to lungs, as a reward of merit. 

But to return from Ethiopia : — 

These newsboys show what out-of-door practice 
will do for a man's lungs. Here is a lawyer who 
can hardly fill a court-room. What would he do if 
he had a long street before him ? What would the 
pale and feeble-speaking minister do, who can scarcely 
make his voice reach two hundred auditors, if he 
were set to cry *' New York Ledger " ? These news- 
boys stand at the head of a street, and send down 
their voice through it, as an athlete would roll a 
ball down an alley. We advise men training for 
speaking-professions to peddle wares in the streets for 
a littlgtime. Young ministers might go into partner- 
ship with newsboys awliile, till they got tlieir mouths 
open, and their larynx nerved and toughened. 

The great want of public speakers is general vigor. 



BE GENEROUS OF BEAUTY. 281 

They need open air, toughening exercise, practice of 
speaking under the skies, — speaking, not bawling. 
A man may tear his voice up by the roots, by too 
much of a gale. There is such a thing as speaking 
at a mark! With the same tone, let a man prac- 
tise, removing the hearer step by step each day, till, 
with the same exertion, he can be heard at great 
distances. In this way he will develop quality of 
tone. For in speaking it is quality and not quantity 
that gives control of an audience. 



BE GENEROUS OF BEAUTY. 




IjJF there be one thing that marks the Divine 
benevolence in the administration of the 
natural world, it is the openness, and, if 
one may so say, the free benevolence' with 
which beauty is made to be the property and solace 
of all men. It is provided above and beneath, in 
every form, in all substances, so that, whoever has 
hunger for it cannot well fail to find food for his 
want. Many desirable things are rare; Only skill 
can gain them ; only great wealth can purchase them. 
The possession of libraries, pictures, sculpture, deco- 
rated grounds, must b§ limited to the few. They are 
a fortunate aristocracy. But, fortunately for the great 
multitude, the gifts of God in nature are without 
money and without price. 

There is a duty implied in the possession of treas- 
ures of beauty. No selfishness seems to us so end- 



282 EYES AND EARS. 

less, and so peculiarly base, as that "^liicli refuses to 
men the innocent enjoyment of the treasures of 
beauty. It may not be wise to lend books, or to be 
free with things which, passing from hand to hand, 
may be lost, damaged, or misappropriated. We do 
not blame any one for making his library, museum, 
or picture collection stationary. But whoever has 
that which can confer pleasure and profit for merely 
the looking at it must be selfish indeed to hide it 
from hungry eyes. If it were money to be lent, rai- 
ment to be worn, food to be eaten, or any usage that 
wastes or diminishes the treasure, the case would be 
different. But what harm comes to garden, grounds, 
picture, or statue, by being looked at ? The eyes 
wear out nothing ! Ten million men have gazed 
upon Baffaelle's Sistine Madonna and Transfigura- 
tion, and soiled them not, nor chafed nor dulled their 
surface. Not half so softly does the dew steal upon 
the flower ; not half so lightly does it rest there, as 
does the eye rest upon objects of beauty ! 

Nothing can make others so rich, without dimin- 
ishing our own means, as generosity in the use of 
art-treasures, or materials of beauty. What then 
shall we say of men whose houses are stored with 
rare and curious books which they secrete ? There 
are men who take a pride in owning works possessed 
by almost no one else, and then in hiding them from 
curious eyes. There are tliose who act as if things 
were unfitted for their own pleasure if they had also 
given pleasure to any one else. 

What shall be said of a man who, by mere force 
of money, has come into possession of some picture, 
or other work of art, which embodies the noblest 



BE GENEKOUS OF BEAUTY. 283 

thoughts of an artist's divine genius, and then veils 
it from the vorld, locks it up for his selfish gaze, and 
virtually annjiilates it? 

It is creditable to our people that, generally, a 
man who has anything that is worth another's atten- 
tion, is more than willing to throw it open to all 
proper and reasonable scrutiny. Many private col- 
lections of pictures in New York and vicinity are 
generously placed, on certain days of every week, 
before any that desire to see them. But exceptions 
there are. It is said that some of Turner's most 
striking pictures in New York cannot be seen ; that 
curious and excessively rare copies of Bibles have 
been hidden up with a miser's greed, and that schol- 
ars and gentlemen seeking access to them have been 
rudely repulsed. A money miser is bad enough. A 
picture-miser, a book-miser, is yet more abject ! 

Tliere is another thing worthy of consideration, 
and that is, a certain freedom of private grounds. 
Gentlemen's places are springing up in every direc- 
tion. Great skill is employed in developing the 
finest effects in landscape, garden, bower, and shrub- 
bery. We cannot be so unreasonable as to ask that 
'one shall divest himself of all privacy and seclusion, 
and make his grounds a common ; but a regulated 
liberty of courteous intrusion is peculiarly proper and 
graceful in the possessors of fine grounds. 

But, whatever may be a man's judgment as to 
admission, he must be a curmudgeon who insists 
upon it that neither the foot nor the eye shall in- 
trude upon the beauty of his domain. In planting 
one's grounds it is fair, by hedge or thicket, to shut 
out too much gazing, — all unsightly objects, noise, and 



284 EYES AND EAKS. 

dust, by thick trees or fences. But a system of seclu- 
sion, that yields no part of a man's grounds to the 
sight of passers-by, cannot be justified. It is a wan- 
ton selfishness. A lawn and garden lying upon the 
street, but separated from it by a high, close fence, 
or impervious wall, so that little children, the poor, 
laborers, common people of all kinds, cannot see the 
treasures within, ought to be made an offence against 
good manners. It is an immorality, to be abated by a 
public sentiment. Can anything be more charming 
than to see a child's face set between two pickets, 
like a sweet picture in a frame, wistfully looking at 
beds of flowers, vines, and trees? 

Methinks the gentle thoughts and grateful silence 
of hundreds, every day, who pass open gardens, and 
cultivated yards, must be more pleasurable to the 
indulgent owner than the fragrance of all his flowers. 
Nothing can well redeem the possession of beauty in 
a large degree, from the charge of sinful self-indul- 
gence, but such a use of it as shall confer pleasure 
on all those who need the solace and ministration of 
the divine element of beauty. 



TRAILING ARBUTUS. 285 



TRAILING ARBUTUS. 




N this tenth day of April I have been out on 
the hills near Elmira, to see what is going on 
among the citizens of the vegetable kingdom. 
A basket, a garden trowel, a pair of thick 
gloves, and a stout, seamless cloth overcoat were my 
outfit. The ground was white in spots with half- 
melted snow. A few whirls of snow had come down 
in the night, and the air was too cold to change it to 
rain. Some green leaves, in sheltered nooks, had ac- 
cepted the advances of the sun, and were preparing 
for the summer. But that which I came to search 
after was the trailing arbutus^ one of the most exqui- 
site of all Nature's fondlings. 

I did not seek in vain. The hills were covered 
with it. Its gay whorls of buds peeped out from ruf- 
fles of snow, in the most charming beauty. Many 
blossoms, too, quite expanded, did I find, some pure 
white, and a few most delicately suffused with pink. 
For nearly an hour I wandered up and down, in pleas- 
ant fancies, searching, plucking, and arranging these 
most beautiful of all early blossoms. 

Who would suspect by the leaf what rare delicacy 
was to be in the blossom ? Like some people of plain 
and hard exterior, but of sweet disposition, it was all 
the more pleasant from the surprise of contrast. All 
winter long this little thing must have slumbered with 
dreams^ at least, of spring. It has waited for no 
pioneer or guide, but started of its own self, and led 
the way for all the flowers on this hill-side. 



286 EYES AND EARS. 

Its little viny stem creeps close to the ground, lium- 
ble, faithful, and showing how the purest white may 
lay its check on the very dirt, without soil or taint. 

The odor of the arbutus is exquisite, and as deli- 
cate as the plant is modest. Some flowers seem deter- 
mined to make an impression on you. They stare at 
you. They dazzle your eyes. If you smell them, 
they overfill your sense with their fragrance. They 
leave nothing for your gentleness and generosity, but 
do everything themselves. But this sweet nestler of 
the spring hills is so secluded, half covered with rus- 
set leaves, that you would not suspect its graces, did 
you not stoop to uncover the vine, to lift it up, and 
then you espy its secluded beauty. If you smell it, 
at first it seems hardly to have an odor. But there 
steals out of it at length the finest, rarest scent, that 
rather excites desire than satisfies your sense. It is 
coy, without designing to be so, and its reserve plays 
upon the imagination far more than could a more 
positive way. 

Without doubt, there are intrinsic beauties in plants 
and flowers, and yet very much of pleasure depends 
upon their relations to the seasons, to the places where 
they grow, and to our own moods. No midsummer 
flower can produce the thrill that the earliest blos- 
soms bring which tell us that winter is gone, that 
growing days have come ! Indeed, it often happens 
that the air is cold, and the face of the earth brown, so 
that we have no suspicion that it is time for anything 
to sprout, until wo chance upon a flower. That reveals 
what our senses had failed to perceive, — a warmth 
in the air, a warmth in the soil, an advance in the 
seasons ! Strange, that a silent, white flower, growing 



TRAILING ARBUTUS. 287 

on a liill-side, measures the astronomic changes, and, 
more than all our senses, discerns that the sun is 
travelling back from his far southward flight ! Some- 
times we admire flowers for their boldness, in cases 
where that quality seems fit. When meadows and 
fields are gorgeous, we look for some flower that shall 
give the climax. An intensity often serves to reveal 
the nature of things in all their several gradations. 
A violet color in these early spring days would not 
please half so well as these pure whites or tender 
pinks. We like snow-drops and crocuses to come up 
pale-colored, as if born of the snow, and carrying their 
mother's complexion. But later, when tlie eye is used 
to blossoms, we wish deeper effects and profusions of 
color, which, had they existed earlier, would have 
offended us. 

Flowers seem to have peculiar power over some 
natures. Of course, they gratify the original faculties 
of form, color, odor ; but that is the least part of their 
effect. They have a mysterious and subtile influence 
upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. 
They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve 
its rigor. In their presence, one finds almost a mag- 
netic tremulousness, as if they were messengers from 
the spirit-world, and conveyed an atmosphere with 
them in which the feelings find soothing, pleasure, 
and peacefulness. Besides this, they are provocative 
of imagination. They set the mind full of fancies. 
They seem to be pretty and innocent jugglers, that 
play their charms and incantations upon the senses 
and the fancy, and lead ofl" the thoughts in many a 
curious wondery, in gay analogies, or curious medleys 
of fantastic dreamings. 



288 EYES AND EARS. 

Well, I have much more to say, if I should say all 
that I have thought, and all that the arbutus said to 
me, this wintry spring morning. But, since I cannot 
bring you here, Mr. Bonner, to let you see the hill 
and all its little jewels, I cend you one of the blossom 
clusters, to wear in your button-hole ; and when you 
go home, and, very properly, are asked, '' Robert, 
who gave you that token ? " — don't you tell. 



MORALS OF BARGAINS. 




ID you ever hear a company of good people, 
as the world goes, recounting their adven- 
tures in the purchase of goods ? They shall 
be persons who would shrink from untruth, 
and yet more from an overt dishonesty. Yet have 
you never witnessed the great delight and almost 
exultation with which they narrate the cheapness of 
their bargain ? Is the fair market price of cloth one 
dollar a yard, they ask your congratulations because 
they bought it for fifty cents a yard! Is the rich 
figured silk worth two dollars, with a glow of un- 
disguised pleasure they tell you that they paid but 
one dollar a yard ! Is a horse bought for half his 
value, — a carriage for one third of what it cost but 
a week before, — a house for less than half it cost the 
bankrupt owner to build it, — there are few persons 
so honest as not to feel that the acquisition has an 
added worth by this very buying it for less than it is 
worth. 



MOEALS OF BAEGAINS. 289 

Now we do not pretend to say that one should never 
bnj things for less than their real value ; that one 
should never avail himself of depreciated prices. 
But what is the disposition which makes men rejoice 
in such bargains ? Is a picture worth two hundred 
and fifty dollars, for which you paid but fifty ? You 
have obtained goods without paying a fair equivalent. 
Every really honest man should always pay a fair 
equivalent for whatever he possesses. The wish to 
get property without equitable service, or full and fair 
consideration, is not honest. It is certainly true that 
property may lose its value in commercial fluctuations, 
and that real estate, personal property, and money 
itself, may from time to time change its value ; and 
every man has a right to take property at the value 
which it has at the time of purchase, without regard 
to what a former value may have been. But this is 
very different from that spirit whicli seeks to beat 
down property below its value ; to take advantage of 
temporary necessities, to desire, even, to get hold of 
another man's property without paying for it what it 
ought, in a given state of market, to command. No 
man should wish another man^s property ivithout ren- 
dering for it a full equivalent. 

Now it is our impression that honest people (in 
their own opinion honest) do habitually desire to get 
more than they give. They wish to obtain something 
for nothing. They jew, chaffer, higgle, and manage, 
with that peculiar wisdom implied in the term " bar- 
gaining," to obtain goods without paying for them 
what they ought to pay. They glory in success. 
They narrate the steps by which they ensnare the 
bargain. They hunt for coveted goods as if they were 

13 S 



ijyO EYES AND EARS. 

wild animals, and to be obtained by adroitness and 
cunning, without any regard to justice and fairness. 
A merchant is a man who has goods. A customer is 
a man who wishes to get possession of them. And 
he seems to think it to be a mere trial of sharp prac- 
tice between them, without any moral principle to 
govern the transaction. But if to desire a neighbor's 
goods without paying for them is coveting^ why is not 
a wish to obtain them at less than a fair price, in it& 
own degree, just as surely coveting ? 

There are few people who will not be benefited by 
pondering over the morals of shopping. The wish to 
get more than you have means to pay for is a wish to 
injure your neighbor, — to obtain his possessions with- 
out a just compensation. And although, occasionally, 
a thing may corne into our hands which we could 
never have had had it not been cheap, yet the uni- 
form desire to depress another's property for the sake 
of making it our own is dishonesty in disposition, 
whether custom sanctions it or not. 



OUTLANDISH BOOKS. 

T is good to walk through an antiquarian 
bookstore. There is a great deal to be 
learned from books without reading them. 
The histories which books contain are, of- 
ten, not half so interesting or so instructive as the 
histories which books themselves are. As often as 
the spring comes, and work is less imperious, aii4 




OUTLANDISH BOOKS. 291 

warmer days set loose the wild and yearning imagi- 
nations of the soul, as the air sets loose the roots and 
frees the flowers from their long imprisonment, we 
feel a roving mood. The fields are too far off, and 
a solitary sea-side is not to be found in the vicinity 
of this great commercial city. Picture-galleries are 
few, and the people in them many ; and one scarcely 
knows where to find the quiet and the meditative 
incitements which he wants. 

At such times I stroll into one of those establish- 
ments, now so numerous, that import and sell sec- 
ond-hand books. The moment that one is across the 
threshold he feels that he has changed worlds. All 
the clamor of the street, the ceaseless passage and 
clash of innumerable vehicles, the confusion of voices, 
seem smothered to a low and gentle hum, and even 
that is forgotten in a moment. Then one walks up 
and down the passages lined with books, the alcoves 
of books, the long tables thick with books, the corners 
stocked and heaped with books, as if this were a city 
of books, in ruins, like some Oriental city of desola- 
tion. All languages are here, and all of them are 
dumb. Their silent symbols hold up hieroglyphic 
significance to such eyes as may chance to know 
them. But as one might stand over a tomb, and 
muse who was laid therein, of what nature, disposi- 
tion, history ; of what experience of woe or joy in 
life ; with what hopes, thoughts, ambitions, struggles, 
failures, or evanescent victories ; so do we stand by 
the side of a book in an unknown language. What 
means this title-page ? What are the words of intro 
duction ? Open to the middle : is this a story, an 
argument, a criticism, a history ? Is it a grave affir 



292 EYES AND EARS. 

mation of mighty truth, such as Bacon would have 
plucked down for heavenly thoughts ? or is it some 
jester, that flashes his momentary say, and waits for 
an answering laughter ? How causeless are causes 
here. These words that have fallen on many a. soul 
like a bow on the violin, and caused vivid emotions 
to spring forth from their touch, are now reaching 
toward my eye, but without a' response. They touch, 
but I do not sound. They are like winds blowing 
among petrified trees whose leaves are fast and whose 
branches are stiffened forever. But though their 
glory is gone, once they were sovereigns. This well- 
thumbed volume has once been a favorite. It has 
been the last thing consulted before sleep ; a solace 
to lucid intervals ; perhaps often a companion of 
journeys. Or when the new grass was soft to pave- 
ment-worn feet, and the solitary scholar has wan 
dered out to hear blackbirds sing by the side of 
spring-swollen streams, or to search for cowslips in 
the watery edges of the marsh lands, under his arm, 
but with affectionate care, goes this welcome compan- 
ion. A book is good company. It is full of conver- 
sation without loquacity. It comes to your longing 
with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is 
not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous 
if you turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or 
mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the soul 
without recompense, not even for the hire of love. 
And yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and 
to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery trans- 
figuration there, until the outward book is but a body, 
and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess 
your memory like a spirit. And while some books, 



OUTLANDISH BOOKS. 293 

like steps, are left behind us by the very help which 
they yield us, and serve only our childhood, or early 
life, some others go with us in mute fidelity to the 
end of life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction 
for our sober hours, and a solace for our sickness or 
sorrow. Except the great out-doors, nothing that 
has no life of its own gives so much life to you. 

And here are these uncomplaining favorites, now 
tumbled in heaps, or keeping dusty company in this 
great catacomb of literature ! No gentle hand now 
fondles them, no eye searches them. They are for- 
eigners, strangers in a strange land. But, peradven- 
ture, there yet shall come a dried and wrinkled man, 
poor in garb, as befits so poor a purse, and, wandering 
up and down among these silent souls imprisoned in 
ink and paper words, who, seeking this dusky volume, 
shall renew his youth of joy, greet a loving, absent 
friend, go and sell all that he hath to buy this pearl 
of price to him, and faintly kindle again in his heavy, 
dark heart the light of a long-lost treasure. 

But really, Mr. Bonner, will you be kind enough 
to give me a nudge ? Will you do me the kindness 
to tread on my foot, and tell me that I am wander- 
ing ? In sooth, I have not said one of the fine fan- 
cies that led me to begin. So much the worse, you 
will say, for those that have the reading of them 
hereafter ! 



294 EYES AND EARS. 




THE DANDELION AND I. 

OT the first blossom, but the first dandelion 
of the year came to us on the seventeenth 
of April ! Golden-faced and most wel- 
come ! Not the earliest of flowers, for the 
woods are full of spring beauties, anemones, and oth- 
ers. The willow has put forth its queer, mulberry- 
shaped blossom. But there is something so bright 
and cheerful in the dandelion that its first coming is 
always watched and waited for with great eagerness, 
and greeted with enthusiasm. It is not a fragrant 
flower, neither is it often gathered for the house or 
hand. It soon shuts up when picked. But it is the 
first real democratic flower of our season. The field 
violets are yet reluctant. The wood flowers fight the 
luigering cold from behind fences, from leaves, and 
under partial protection. The sanguinaria, or Indian 
puccoon, is not yet sending its pure white blossom 
from its blood-red root, like a noble soul rising from a 
battle-stained body. The ground is too cold for the 
marsh marigold or cowslip of New England, far-famed 
as " greens." 

The dandelion is the first conspicuous, hardy, wide- 
spread, and abundant flower of spring. It grows in 
all places ; on hills, in the meadow, in town and city, 
as well as country. It gives one a sudden start in 
going down a barren, stony street, to see upon a nar- 
row strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radi- 
ant dandelion shining in the grass, like a spark 
dropped from the sun ! It stirs up the thoughts and 



THE DANDELION AND I. 295 

tells US what is going on in the heavens and on the 
earth, unbeknown to us who are pent up in cities. 
Why, if dandelions have come, then birds are mated ; 
nests are repairing or building ; swallows are coming, 
and wrens and phoebes have come ! Bluebirds and 
robins and song-sparrows must have become familiar 
sights to country people by this time of the year. We 
reach our hand through after that solitary dandelion. 
It is too far off. All eager persons measure the length 
of their arm by their eye, and will not believe how 
short it is, under three or four tryings. 

Is it stealing to take a dandelion through the fence ? 
Then we have made a gap in the Commandments a 
good many times. But are ethical rules quite as rigid 
upon dandelions as upon ducats and dollars ? At any 
rate, we have never had remorse for pulling the first 
dandelion — if we could reach it. There is a little 
ambition in the matter. Several pairs of eyes besides 
our own have a gentle rivalry and competition for the 
first golden disc. 

People watch us, and wonder what we can be at. 
Two or three gentlemen, thinking there must be some- 
thing important that attracts us, stop and look over, 
and seeing what it is, scarcely disguise with politeness 
their contempt for a man hunting dandelions. News- 
boys edge up familiarly. " Wat ye lost, mister ? — 
Sha'n't I jump over and hunt it ? " It needs no hunt- 
ing, lad, — here it shines in the grass like a golden 
eagle in a miser's eye. Anii as for picking it for me, 
that would just take away half the pleasure. I want 
to feel the moist, cool stem with my own fingers, — to 
slide down the touch to its very root, and with the 
nail gently to cut it, without prejudice to the half- 
dozen buds that nestle there like so many baby heads 



296 EYES AND EAKS. 

in a crib. I could reach it with a stick, but that 
would be profanation. A kind old gentleman passes, 
and smiles sympathetically, as if he would say, " Ah, 
— I understand all that, — I like you a great deal 
better for your enthusiasm," and he passes on, him- 
self almost as handsome as a dandelion. 

No. Though I reached at least two inches farther 
than before, I could only just touch, but not pluck it ! 
Some chubby-faced children want to see what it is, 
and, a little shy of me, stand at some distance, with 
their sweet faces framed in between the iron pickets. 
Yes, dear things, that is just the way of the world 
into which you have entered. Flowers on one side, 
children on the other, and iron fences between ! Yet 
you will find some flowers on your side of the fence 
too by and by, I hope. 

I will try a forked stick ! Where is there one ? A 
stick ! — stones enough, dirt enough, bricks, shavings, 
beams, and planks. But sticks are rare things in a 
city. 0, the country is the place to live in. You 
can always find a stick ! I am in two troubles. I 
cannot get my dandelion without a stick, and I can- 
not find a stick. If I go off for one, somebody will 
get my flower ! 

Some school-girls are going past, — one, two, three, 
four, five, the last one silent and alone ; the rest like 
a tree full of birds, making a jargon of music, and 
cross-firing of sweet discordances. They look at me, 
and then at each other. The creatures see the ludi- 
crous side of this affair ! They hope for me, and really 
sympathize, I know. Yet witches, they scarcely care 
to hide their laughter, which, at half-a-dozen steps. 
breaks out like water pent up that has found a ne\v 
channel to gurgle in! 



THE DANDELION AND I. 297 

Shall I climb this ailan thus- tree for a stick ? I 
would in a minute if it were only in the country. 
That 's another objection to a city life. Nobody is 
surprised in the country to see a man up a tree. 
But in a city, a gentlemanly person making his way 
up into a tree would have a motley crowd around 
him in a jiffy ! (Mr. Bonner, can you tell your 
readers, in your column of Answers to Correspond- 
ents, just the measure of time meant by "jiffy"?) 
And no wonder, come to think of it. The act of 
climbing is one of adroitness rather than of graceful- 
ness. First, a jump and a good hug with the arms. 
Then, drawing up the legs, the knees clasp each side 
of the tree, the feet touching each other at a point 
that would be intersected by a Hue drawn through 
the spine and extended. You are in posture. You 
resemble a frog drawn up for a spring, and set up 
endways. Next, you straighten up and raise your 
arms a ring higher. Then holding fast by them, like 
an inch-worm, you bring on the other half. After 
two or three jerks, you will begin to put one leg 
around the tree, so that the calf shall clasp the back 
side and the shin scrape itself on the other. And as 
you go up, so do the legs of your pantaloons, which, 
at ten feet, are corrugated around your knees in a 
manner that will give your skin and the bark of the 
tree a fair chance to see which is toughest. And 
about this time it is a curious fact that most men 
begin to quirl their tongue out of the corners of 
their mouths, as if that were a great help to them. 
Now I decline doing all this in a city, with police- 
men musing whether I am to be arrested for insan- 
ity, and my neighbors laughing, and boys cheering 

13* 



298 EYES AND EARS. 

me, and sundry unsavory jests broken on me, — not 
even for a stick will I so expose myself. Cities are 
hateful. Nobody can do anything but just walk up 
and down the streets ; everybody afraid that every- 
body will laugh if anybody acts as he wants to ! Ah, 
sweet herald of coming summer ! there you nest your- 
self in the grass, unconscious of all this disturbance 
in my breast ! The church over opposite, built high 
and grand of carved stone, with windows full of 
painted saints, throws its great shadow toward you ; 
but tell me, dear little flower, did it ever say " God 
bless you ! " to such a useless thing of God's making 
as you ? Ah, dandelion, what do you think of those 
saints in the window ? Do you hear or feel that 
organ whose solemn tones jar the very ground ? Do 
you need priests and Sabbaths and choirs to help 
you worship Him that made you ? or, with sweet-faced 
simplicity, is it needful for you only to open your 
bosom, and God is praised by your blossoming beau- 
ty ? Yet do not deride the cathedral, dandelion ! 
Men need them, though flowers do not ! 

But what shall I do ? Can I not throw a lasso at 
its neck, and noose it ? To be defeated now would 
be ignominious indeed ! Why not climb over ? What 
if I should slip and get caught on the top of these 
iron spikes ? A dainty spectacle ! If only half-way 
over I should be no better oif than on this side, and 
certainly no better on. 

Must I relinquish the thing? Wliat! baffled by 
A dandelion ? I, a freeman, with pride of faculty, 
touching the stars by my reason and imagination, 
and not able to touch that dandelion! No. Havo 
it I must 1 

Have it I did! 



ORAL FARMING. 299 



ORAL FARMING. 




r is now May 4. Not only has spring come, 
but the full farming spring. And as your 
humble servant (as very proud people call 
themselves) is now a Peekskill farmer, liv- 
ing by the sweat of his (hired workmen's) brow, how 
can you expect anything from him except of crops, of 
sorts, of fertilizers ? Indeed, sir, my grass-lands look 
remarkably well, considering the backwardness of the 
season. I have rolled them, top-dressed them, and 
given them the best advice in my power. Let the 
moss keep away ! Away all thistles ; and, above all, 
that thistliest of all thistles, which is, doubtless, the 
very one sent originally to sharpen Adam, — the Can- 
ada-thistle ! Let no dock come forth ; and, ox-eyed 
daisies, fair as is your great moon face, and beautiful 
as you certainly are to unsophisticated eyes, a mowing- 
lot is no place for you. Meantime, let the Timothy 
shoot up its stem, bearing a cat-tailed head, only less 
for horses than oats themselves ! Prince of all grasses 
for fodder, may the season be propitious for thee ! 
Let dews moisten thy cat-tailed head, and frequent 
rains thy roots, until July comes riding to thee in a 
mower. Then bow thy head, — die as meekly as thou 
hast gracefully lived ; for is not glory before thee ? 
Thy slender stem shall be changed to horses' legs ; 
thy blades shall beam forth from the mild eye of my 
Alderney ; thou shalt come forth white as milk, and 
thence, yellow as butter or rich as cheese ! 

But now, shall the mowing-lot rest ? Is its work 



800 EYES AND EARS. 

done ? Npt if properly constructed. Tlie Timothy 
will seldom give a second growth worth cutting. It 
ought not to be pastured, because catde pull up the 
tufts by the root. But if a due admixture of other 
grasses has been made, no sooner is the first crop 
gone than four or five other kinds of quick-springing 
grasses will come again ; and if the soil be in good 
heart, a second ; and if irrigated or watered from a 
cart, a third crop may be cut. 

But really, you will imagine that this is a communi- 
cation from some president of an agricultural society ! 
I am not a president of anything, — not even a mem- 
ber. But you know that I am in the first love of a 
spring farming campaign I It is not hot yet. I have 
actually been working with my own hands ! 0, the 
apple-trees set ! the pear-trees — standards and on 
quince — that are prophesying to me from the side of 
the hill ! Not a leaf is on them ; and yet I see Seck- 
els, Bartletts, D'Angoulemes, and Rostiezers, (and Sir 
Seckel had better look out for its supremacy when 
such pears as the Bostiezer come along !) Will you 
not come up and eat pears with me ? Not this sum- 
mer ! But when the trees come into bearing ! What 
if the engagement promises to be some years hence ? 
Shall, we not both be a little older, and wiser, and, 
losing nothing of our relish for good fruit, shall we 
not be able to hold a more grave and profitable con- 
versation while sitthig on the balcony, eating ? 

But ah! the corn that I intend having! I have 
arranged to beat the field over the way all hollow. 
The fact is, I quite look down on the neighbor at 
the foot of my lane. He won't cut away the trees 
in his yard "ihat hide from his parlor windows the 



ORAL FARMING. 301 

broad Hudson ! Can such a man raise corn ? I have 
moved my corn-field right down to the road, so that 
everybody can see it, and especially the man over the 
way ! It will not do for people that wish to thrive to 
lie awake mornings, looking out of their windows at 
woodchucks. Good corn can be had at Peekskill 
only by enterprise and industry. Now I have made 
an arrangement with my conductor, that if this crop 
of corn succeeds, it is to be my cultivation ; but if it 
turns out indifferently, is to be his work. May cut- 
worms spare it ! May all these loads of benevolence- 
to-grain, hauled with so much trouble and expense, 
lie low through the summer, under the roots, but 
shoot their vigor up the stem to the very tasselled 
top ! Let no droutli come before mid-August, and 
then corn will laugh at it, and shake its jolly head 
in defiance. Shall I insert along the rows a few of 
those round-bellied pumpkins, — the genuine, old- 
fashioned Yankee pumpkins ? Some say not, and 
some say, do. I hesitate. Ought the same soil 
to feed two crops at the same time ? And yet, how 
quaint and pleasant, in autumn, as the blades of 
corn grow russet, are the yellow orbs that shine out ! 
What instant thoughts do they suggest to the passer- 
by of pumpkin-pies, of Thanksgiving days, of old New 
England homes ! But I must close, and it shall be 
with a story. 

Good old Dr. Bigger (we will call him) was a 
Baptist preacher in Indiana, and never liked to have 
any one beat him in telling a round, full-proportioned 
story. A wag seeing him coming down tlie street, 
said to his cronies: "Now I mean to stump that old 
gentleman." So, on his approach, he says : " Doctor, 



802 EYES AND EARS. 

I really wish you had seen a piece of land I have 
on White River. I planted corn and pumpkins on 
five acres, and when I cut off the corn, the pumpkins 
were so thick along the ground, that I could step 
from one to another across the whole field ! " The 
Doctor, nothing loath, drew up, and, eying him a 
moment, broke forth : " Why, sir, that was very well, 
but / had a ten-acre field this fall on which the 
pumpkins lay so close to each other that when I 
stood at one corner, and hit one pumpkin with my 
foot, it jarred the whole ten acres i " Can anybody 
around Peekskill raise better pumpkins than that ? 



DRY FISHING. 




Y DEAR Mr. Bonner: Allow me to invite 
you to go with me a dry-fishing. What is 
dry-fishing ? Not one in a water-tight 
boat ; nor on high-bank streams ; nor on 
white, dry gravel along the edges of pools. I prac- 
tise it in this wise. If you will come with me, you 
shall have your share. Let us go into Conroy's. 
Now don't strike out that name for fear the Ledger 
will be thought advertising his establishment. I wish 
the name to stand. I repeat it, for I have many asso- 
ciations of pleasant hours there. Come, then, with 
me to Conroy's. A modest front ! Only a net, a 
decoy duck, a few cane-poles, and some other fishing- 
stuff, to hint to you that April has come, and that 
every honest man is expected to do his duty. Enter. 



DRY FISHING. 303 

Boliold a long room, stocked on either side with 
things mnumerable, needless and necessary for the 
practice of the royal art! On the right stand rows 
of trou ting-rods, the best in their cases with the lower 
end of the cloth rolled up, like a boy's trousers in 
summer, revealing the polished brass or German-sil- 
ver ferules and joints. Ah, what do you see ? Only 
those cloth cases, and the half-concealed trou ting- 
rods ? But I see more. I see a boy, fresh, ruddy, 
unperverted, brave-hearted. If rude, only so from 
a frank, honest way of forethinking nothing for de- 
ceit. Him the benign father has promised on his 
thirteenth birthday a real Conroy's rod. He has 
dreamed of it. At length the day comes. It is his. 
The reel, the silk line, the fine leading lines, the 
hooks, the cunning flies, the basket, all are his ! See 
the lad walk out into the street. Nobody can give 
him anything now ! What are princes ? Who are 
"kings ? Boys, undoubtedly. They are the only 
royal persons. Kings in empire, all the air and all 
the earth are theirs for enjoying! Kings wit*liout 
crowns or cares, they ! He walks the street home- 
ward, pitying beggar-boys that have no fathers to 
give them fishing-rods ! He pities merchants and 
bankers that, having money, lack sense to buy rods 
and lines! He walks into the house before the ad- 
miring family, to ^display his treasures ! I see him 
in the country. It is scarce four in the morning, 
but he is up. The east is beginning to turn white 
and red. He is oif for the brook. It comes down 
from the far hills, and winds its way silently with 
many a twist and turn in the meadows. Ah, glori- 
ous morning on the meadows! Sleep on, lazy folks 



804 EYES AND EARS. 

yet in bed ; God reserves these royalties of the morn- 
ing for honest work-folk that rise early, for birds that 
never sing as they do before sunrise, and for bold, 
truth-loving boys, that forswear sleep and forget food, 
that they may wind through these meadows in the 
light of sunrise ! The rod is put together, the reel 
in place, the long line flashes in the air like a spider's 
thread, the daintiest bit of a fly at the end of it, por- 
tends mischief. My dear boy, tread softly. The 
very weight of your free foot will impart a jar to the 
earth that trout understand. The wise ones are 
always large and fat and shy. Give the grass a pres- 
sure, but not a stroke with your foot. There. See 
the light flash in that water at the turn. Something 
is tickling it, for see the ripples that smile over its 
face. Then the boy makes his first cast. He poises 
himself. Measures the distance. Dexterously swing- 
ing the long lash, he puts the fly pat upon the very 
spot. Another ripple flashes up. Our boy slings 
back the line, with a bright fellow shining' and shiv- , 
ering through air, and flung a dozen rods behind 
him, where he flounces and squirms, vainly endeav- 
oring to swim in the wet grass ! Excuse the over- 
eager twitch. The boy is nervous yet. He will 
sober down to his work, for he must fish a full two 
hours here, clear up to that bridge, up past that 
gaunt tree that is dead all but one branch, which 
holds a few leaves in its hands like a pocket-hand- 
kerchief, and up to the alder-thicket. By that time 
his basket will be full and his stomach empty, of 
which facts he will be more and more conscious at 
every step as he goes home. But who comes ? The 
sun is driving its flocks up the mountain-side, which 



DKY FISHING. 805 

we should take to be mists, did we not know that 
those hills are the sun-pastures for aerial breeds of 
unsheared sheep, that feed of nights and are driven 
home of days ! But come back, Mr. Bonner, to the 
store. In this glass case see the nameless traps and 
fixings for all manner of uses ! Here are flasks, 
leather-covered. I never could imagine why it was 
necessary to cover flasks so elaborately for the pur- 
pose of carrying milk. Do you suppose that water 
is cooler or milk sweeter for it ! But here, too, are 
eating arrangements for picnics, drinking-cups, and 
all manner of things that lift up before our eyes the 
vision of summer woods, of bonnets laid off, of merry, 
laughing people, among rocks and trees, by the side 
of a clear, bubbling spring, where youth and beauty 
spend a joyous • hour ! 

Those spear-heads, too, — fish-spears. Did you ever 
go a suckering at night, Mr. Bonner? Then you 
have something good before you yet. We will have 
a burning torch in one hand, our spear in the other, 
and enter on a good wide, but not too deep river, 
about eight or nine at night. Begin below, and work 
your way up. You are dressed for wetting. Now 
step cautiously along, searching by your light for 
fish, which you shall see soon moving as in a dream, 
down below the water, along the stones, or pausing 
upon a few gravel spots, their mouths playing with 
a sucking motion, as if the whole stream were their 
mother, and they were feeding at the breast. These 
are true philosophers ! How coolly they take life. 
No newspapers disturb their tranquillity. They sow 
not, nor reap. Plough and sickle are unknown below 
the water. No washing-days have they, nor hanging 



806 EYES AND EAKS. 

out of clothes to dry ! No dust in their eyes, unless 
some impertinent mill lets sawdust into the stream ! 
No insects buzz about them, neither do flies nor mos- 
quitos annoy their sleep. Their beds are always 
ready, their raiment is always clean without washing, 
they spread no table and wash up no dishes. Combs 
are a superfluity. Books are never dry down where 
the fish live ! Happy people ! Your caudal fin is 
better than Ericsson's propeller up stream, and down 
stream the river itself bears you without toil. If I were 
a fish, I think I should take up a travelling business. 
But we must attend to duty. There is a call for that 
fish right under you ! With a dull grating sound, 
down comes your transfixing spear, and he is fast in 
the middle, and very lively at both ends. Invert 
your spear. Basket him. And as you look up at the 
lifted spear, see the overhanging trees above you. 
No man knows what fairy trees are, until he has stood 
at night underneath them, with a strong light cast up 
into them from below. Stand a moment. There 
are oaks and chestnuts, vast and wide outstretching. 
Their roots drink here a full supply. Are not these 
fairy bowers? A breath of wind moves the leaves. 
They dance in the green twilight, up there, like 
sylphs. A moving leaf lets through a star, and 
another, as if diamonds hung in the tree. Out on 
either bank the air is dark. Tlie stream gurgles and 
plashes about your feet. The torchlit tree overhead, 
the somnolent twilights down under water, all be- 
witch you from your work, and set you a fishing 
for other things than suckers. Your companions are 
shouting for you. No such romance detains them. 
They have caught ten fish to your one. But will 



APPLE-TREES IN LOVE. 807 

your basket reveal all that you have caught? But, 
Mr. Bonner, I put my hand on your shoulder and 
give you a shake. See. We have not been out of 
the store at all. This has all been Dry Fishing! 
There is much more besides. There are shark-hooks, 
there are sea-gaffs, there are nets, all manner of 
lines, of cords. I could take you a Dry Fishing 
to Newfoundland Banks, away up to Labrador, or 
on the Thousand Islands, or the St. Lawrence, or 
along the weirs and herring of Eastport and Lubeck. 
But I forbear, lest some say that, if dry fishing is no 
better than dry writing, the less there is of it the 
better ! 



APPLE-TREES IN LOVE. 




r makes no difference that you have seen 
forty or fifty springs ; each one is as new, 
every process as fresh, and the charm as 
fascinating as if you had 'never witnessed a 
single one. Nature works the same things without 
seeming repetition. There, for instance, is the apple- 
tree. Every year since our boyhood it has been 
doing the same thing; standing low to the ground, 
with a round and homely head, without an element 
of grandeur or poetry, except once a year. In tlie 
month of May, apple-trees go a courting. Love is 
evermore father of poetry. And the month of May 
finds the orchard no longer a plain, sober, business 
affair, but the gayest and most radiant frolicker of the 
year. We have seen human creatures whose ordinary 



808 EYES AND EARS. 

life was dutiful and prosaic. But when some extraor- 
dinary excitement of grief, or, more likely, of deep 
love, had thoroughly mastered them, they broke forth 
into a richness of feeling, an inspiration of sentiment, 
that mounted up into the very kingdom of beauty, 
and for the transient hour they glowed with the very 
elements of poetry. And so to us seems an apple- 
tree. From June to May, it is a homely, duty-per- 
forming, sober, matter-of-fact tree. But May seems 
to stir up a love heat in its veins. The old round- 
topped, crooked-trunked, and ungainly-boughed fel- 
low drops all world-ways, and takes to itself a new 
idea of life. Those little stubbed spurs, that, all the 
year, had seemed like rheumatic fingers, or thumbs 
and fingers stiffened and stubbed by work, now are 
transformed. Forth put they a little head of buds, 
which a few rains and days of encouraging warmth 
solicit to a cluster of blossoms. At first rosy and 
pink, then opening purely white. And now, where 
is your old homely tree ? All its crookedness is hid- 
den by the sheets of blossoms. The whole top is 
changed to a royal dome. The literal, fruit-bearing 
tree is transfigured, and glows with raiment whiter 
and purer than any white linen. It is a marvel and a 
glory ! What if you have seen it before, ten thousand 
times over ? An apple-tree in full blossom is like a 
message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity 
and beauty ! We walk around it reverently and ad- 
miringly. We are never tired of looking at its profu- 
sion. Homely as it ordinarily is, yet now it speaks of 
the munificence of God better than any other tree. 
The oak proclaims strength and rugged simplicity. 
The hickory grown in open fields speaks a language 



APPLE-TREES IN LOVE. 309 

of gentility. The pine is a solitary, stately fellow. 
Even in forests, each tree seems alone, and has a sad, 
Castilian-like pride. The elm is a prince. Grace and 
glory are upon its head. In our Northern fields it has 
no peer. But none of these speak such thoughts of 
abundance, such prodigal and munificent richness, 
such lavish, unsparing generosity, as this same plain 
and homely apple-tree. The very glory of God seems 
resting upon it! It is a little inverted hemisphere, 
like that above it, and it daily mimics with bud and 
bloom the stars that nightly blossom out into the dark- 
ness above it. Though its hour of glory is short, into^ 
it is concentrated a magnificence which puts all the 
more stately trees into the background ! If men will 
not admire, insects and birds will ! 

There, on the very topmost twig, that rises and falls 
with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous but sweet- 
singiiig bobolink, singing, as a Roman-candle fizzes, 
showers of sparkling notes. If you stand at noon 
under the tree, you are in a very bee-hive. The tree 
is musical. The blossoms seem, for a wonder, to have 
a voice ! The odor is not a rank atmosphere of sweet. 
Like the cups from which it is poured, it is delicate 
•and modest. You feel as if there were a timidity in 
it, that asked your sympathy and yielded to solicita- 
tion. You do not take it whether you will or not, 
but, though it is abundant, you follow it rather than 
find it. 

Is not this gentle reserve, that yields to real admi- 
ration, but hovers aloof from coarse or cold indiffer- 
ence, a beautiful trait in woman or apple-tree ? 

But was there ever such a spring ? Did orchards 
ever before praise God with such choral colors ? The 



310 EYES AND EARS. 

whole landscape is aglow with orchard-radiance. The 
hill-sides, the valleys, the fields, are full of blossoming 
trees. The pear and cherry have shed their blossoms. 
The ground is white as snow with their flakes. But 
it is the high noon just now, on this eighteenth day 
of May, with the apple-trees ! Let other trees boast 
their superiority in other months. But in the month 
of May, the very flower-month of the year, the crown 
and glory of all is the apple-tree ! 

Therefore, in my calendar, hereafter, I do ordain 
that the name of this month be changed. Instead of 
May, let it henceforth be called in my kingdom, " TJie 
Month of the Apple-Blossom^ 



GENIUS AND INDUSTRY. 




NDUSTRY is a substitute for genius. "Where 
one or more faculties exist in the highest 
state of development and activity, — as the 
faculty of music in Mozart, invention in 
Fulton, ideality in Milton, — we call the possessor 
a genius. But a genius is usually understood to be 
a creature of such rare facility of mind, that he can 
do anything without labor. According to the popu- 
lar notion, he learns without study, and knows with- 
out learning. He is eloquent, without preparation ; 
exact, without calculation ; and profound, without 
reflection. While ordinary men toil for knowledge 
by reading, by comparison, and by minute research, 
a genius is supposed to receive it as the mind re- 



GENIUS AND INDUSTRY. 311 

ceives dreams. His mind is like a vast cathedral, 
through whose colored windows the sunlight streams, 
painting the aisles with the varied colors of brilliant 
pictures. Such minds may exist. 

So far as I have observed the species, they abound 
in academies, colleges, and Thespian societies ; m 
village debating-clubs, in coteries of young artists, 
and among young professional aspirants. They are 
to be known by a reserved air, excessive sensitive- 
ness, and utter indolence ; by very long hair, and 
very open shirt-collars ; by the reading of much 
wretched poetry, and the writing of much yet more 
wretched ; by being very conceited, very affected, 
very disagreeable, and very useless : beings whom 
no man wants for friend, pupil, or companion. 

The occupations of the great man and of the com- 
mon man are necessarily, for the most part, the 
same ; for the business of life is made up of minute 
affairs, requiring only judgment and diligence. A 
high order of intellect is required for the discoveiy 
and defence of truth ; but this is an unfrequent task. 
Where the ordinary wants of life once require rec- 
ondite principles, they will need the application of 
familiar truths a thousand times. Those who en- 
large the bounds of knowledge n»ust push out with 
bold adventure beyond the common walks of men. 
But only few pioneers are needed for the largest 
armies, and a few profound men in each occupation 
may herald the advance of all the business of society. 
The vast bulk of men are required to discharge the 
homely duties of life ; and they have less need of 
genius than of intellectual industry and patient en- 
terprise. Young men should observe that those who 



312 EYES AND EARS. 

take the honors and emoluments of mechanical crafts, 
of commerce, and of professional life, are rather dis- 
tinguished for a sound judgment and a close appli- 
cation, tlian for a brilliant genius. In the ordinary 
business of life, industry can do anything which 
genius can do, and very many things which it can- 
not. Genius is usually impatient of application, irri- 
table, scornful of men's dulness, squeamish at petty 
disgusts ; — it loves a conspicuous place, a short 
work, and a large reward ; it loathes the sweat of 
toil, the vexations of life, and the dull burden of 
care. 

Industry has a firmer muscle, is less annoyed by 
delays and repulses, and, like water, bends itself to 
the shape of the soil over which it flows ; and if 
checked, will not rest, but accumulates, and mines 
a passage beneath, or seeks a side-race, or rises above 
and overflows the obstruction. What genius per- 
forms at one impulse, industry gains by a succession 
of blows. In ordinary matters, they differ only in 
rapidity of execution, and are upon one level before 
men, who see the result^ but not the process. It is 
admirable to know that those things which in skill, 
in art, and in learning the world has been unwilling 
to let die, have not only been the conceptions of 
genius, but the products of toil. The masterpieces 
of antiquity, as well in literature as in art, are known 
to have received their extreme finish from an almost 
incredible continuance of labor upon them. I do 
not remember a book in all the departments of learn- 
ing, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the 
schools of art, from which its author has derived a 
permanent renown, that is not known to have been 



-NEW CLOTHES. 313 

long and patiently elaborated. Genius needs indus- 
try, as much as industry needs genius. If only Mil- 
ton's imagination could have conceived his visions, 
his consummate industry only could have carved the 
immortal lines which enshrine them. If only New- 
ton's mind could reach out to the secrets of Nature, 
even his could only do it by the homeliest toil. The 
works of Bacon are not midsummer-niglit dreams, 
but, like coral islands, they have risen from the 
depths of truth, and formed their broad surfaces 
above the ocean by the minutest accretions of perse- 
vering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo's 
genius would have perished like a night's fantasy, 
had not his industry given them permanence. 




NEW CLOTHES. 

RE not clothes an evidence of sin, and a pen- 
alty therefor ? When one considers the 
care, labor, mental trouble, and various de- 
grees of discipline connected with clothing, 
it seems strange that it should not have been arranged 
for men as for birds and animals. What a large part 
of human industry is employed in the manufacture of 
fabrics ; how great the number of persons who spend 
their lives in cutting, fitting, sewing, and otherwise 
preparing dress ! Then, too, the time which every 
one of us must consume in thinking of dress ; select- 
ing and arranging ; and the daily consumption of 
time in robing and disrobing ! All this care and ex- 
u 



314 EYES AJ!^D EARS. 

pense is spared to birds and beasts. It is said that 
they toil not, neither do they spin ! So neither do 
they weave, cut, or sew ! They have no buttons to 
put on, or grumble about when they come off! 

There are my ducks : they have the most compact 
dressing-case ever invented. Do they wish to eat, — 
the bill is employed ; do they wish to carve and cut 
their food, — the bill is case-knife, or carving-knife, 
and fork to boot! Do they wish to dress cloth, — the 
bill is better than teasels are ! Would they brush 
their coat and pantaloons, — behold ! the bill is brush 
too. Would they prepare themselves with a mack- 
intosh, or india-rubber garment, against water and 
weather, — the bill goes to work, and, from a little 
private arrangement of their own, extracts the wet- 
repelling oil, and lays it on evenly all over their coat. 
Would they brush their hair, polish their boots, — 
again comes this facile instrument-of-all-work, the 
bill, and dusts the one and rubs down the other. 
Then, with inimitable simplicity, this important mem- 
ber turns to the dinner, and becomes, indeed, a bill of 
fare and food. How much would human life be sim- 
plified by some such arrangement ! 

There, too, is my friend the bobolink ! He steps 
off his perch in the morning, finds a wash-basin in the 
dew on a head of clover, and makes his toilet with 
flowers for a looking-glass. He sings awhile, brushes 
his hair, sings again, takes a bite of breakfast, and 
eats, sings, and brushes, without fastidious suggestions 
of a ridiculous propriety. 

My cows, too, have a very economical method of 
arranging their wardrobe. It is a wonderful conven- 
ience to have your clothes grow on you. In fact, a 



NEW CLOTHES. 315 

COW i? preparing a coat and vest in the mere act of 
eating ! Since hair and skin are formed from secre- 
tions, and these are supplied to the blood by digestion 
of food, the stomach turns out to be a great cloth 
manufactory. And while a cow, lying down at even- 
ing under a tree, seems the very picture of quiet, 
chewing her cud with half-shut eyes, she is, in fact, 
getting ready her clothes 1 

Only man is doomed to spend a large portion of his 
time in providing the materials and making prepara- 
tion of his clothes. How odd it would seem to see a 
robin pull off its feather coat at night, and prepare for 
retiring ! 

How much stranger still, if respectable men had 
their clothes formed upon them ! and vests, panta- 
loons, coats, secreted from their food! If a button 
flew off, lo, a button germ would at once begin to 
swell and grow ! If a seam ripped, or some unlucky 
contact tore a hole, the parts would throw out new 
matter for repairs, and bridge over the gulf. Alas ! 
it is vain to repine or speculate upon the probable, 
convenience of a different arrangement. Here we 
are, just as we are ! And sheep and flax and cotton 
must give us staple ; we must dye, spin, and weave ; 
measure and cut, fit and sew, put on and wear out, 
cast off and renew, to the end of the world. But one 
thing ought to be done. Every one who has made 
luxury a study, knows that the worst period of dress 
is when it is new, A new hat creases and hurts your 
head. A new boot fevers your foot. And though 
new clothes may fit you like a skin, yet because they 
are new, you are conscious of them. You are afraid 
to sit down then, lest the new clothes should be soiled. 



316 EYES AND EARS. 

Your coat must not be rubbed. At every step Iffe has 
to serve your new clothes. This may do for Sunday. 
The greater leisure of that day gives unoccupied 
minds a welcome business in taking care of their 
clothes. And so we see men animating the centre of 
a well-arranged suit of clothes, and carrying them, 
with great care and painstaking, so that they are ex- 
hibited to the fairest advantage ! 

But to those who are a little nervous this first ser- 
vice in behalf of new clothes is annoying. We are 
never really happy till new clothes are broken in. 
Then we are their master ; before, fliey were ours ! 
Now, would it not be as well to have new clothes old 
at the start ? Counterfeiters are said to put new bills 
into their boots and walk upon them, to give that worn 
and crumpled look that shall resemble well-circulated, 
lawful bills. Why should we not have clothes crum- 
pled a little, and worn for us, as a part of their prep- 
aration ? In short, as we have oxen trained before we 
buy them ; as we have horses broken and drilled, so 
clothes ought to be broken in. Then we should have 
the luxury of an old coat, from the beginning ! Then 
boots and shoes would embrace our feet, not as stran- 
gers, with cold formalities, but with that negligent 
ease of care which belongs to established friendships. 
But I barely make the suggestion. To others must 
be left the carrying out of a thing so important ! 



WOKMS. 31 T 




WORMS. 

YEAR with but eleven months must "be 
lame. Yet Brooklyn has but eleven in her 
calendar. June is lost out. Eaten up! 
Worm-eaten ! The fairest month of the 
year is June. Summer has not dried her soil, nor 
scorched the grass or leaves. They are in the earli- 
est growth, — fresh, plump, and succulent. The air 
is tempered between extremes. It is the rose month, 
the lily month, the month of early flowers. And yet 
June is lost to us by the irruption and devastations 
of worms. It ought to be named the Vermicular 
month ! The trees are stripped of their leaves, the 
air is full of webs, the pavement is covered with 
crushed or crawling worms, and, floating upon their 
silvery threads, worms so fill the space between trees 
and sidewalk, that one cannot pass under without 
carrying with him a retinue of worms ! The air is 
full of their odor, the walks are slippery with them. 
• It is amusing to witness the various methods of 
locomotion and escape practised by those who are not 
yet hardened to this warfare. Ladies may be seen 
walking in the middle of the streets, or walking a 
zigzag course, now poking their parasols at some 
invisible enemy in the air, or dodging and winding 
around hither and thither ; stopping occasionally to 
take account of stock and deposit superfluous addi- 
tions to the wardrobe. Some, more nervous, on being 
en webbed under some tree, utter gentle shrieks, and 
we have seen not a few turn back, and make a cir- 



318 EYES AND EARS. 

cuit of several blocks, rather than face these pen 
dants of the trees! See that fair lady advancmg 
serene and secure. With an earnest look she sud- 
denly stops, glides to the right, only to recede yet 
more quickly. But forward, backward, right or left, 
up or down, it is all the same. The tree is a vast 
tent, and once beneath it, it matters little which 
course you take ! 

Individually, a worm is insignificant. But col- 
lectively, they defy a whole city. They are easily 
crushed, undefended, with no power of escape, uni- 
versally detested, and yet they are invincible, and 
man, if not crushed, is defeated before the worm. 

The greatest forces are made up of units of weak- 
ness. An engineer can pierce and tunnel solid moun- 
tains, build roads on the precipitous sides of cliffs, 
bridge floods, and rear up against the very ocean 
barriers which defy tide and storm. But a locust, 
a rat, a worm, an insect, simply by fecundity, is more 
powerful against skill, science, and every enginery, 
than the lightning or the floods of the sea. The 
wire-worm takes possession of the fields, and the 
farmer is in his power. The fly attacks the wheat, 
and no force can hinder his devastation. Your 
plum-trees may be planted around your house, and 
within reach of daily observation and protection, and 
yet, in spite of every precaution, the insignificant 
brown-coated Curculio will use every green j)lum for 
a nest for his baby-bugs, and then kick them off the 
tree before your angry eyes. 

The Oriental hosts of Locusts are famous in his- 
tory and in literature. Indeed, some of the most 
Bublime passages of the prophets in the sacred Scrip- 



WORMS. 319 

tures are those which describe the coming, progress, 
and desolation of locust swarms. A single example 
shall show. It is from Joel : — 

" A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of 
clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread 
upon the mountains : a great people and a strong ; 
there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be 
any more after it, even to the years of many genera- 
tions. A fire devoureth before them ; and behind 
them a flame burneth : the land is as the garden of 
Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wil- 
derness ; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The 
appearance of them is as the appearance of horses ; 
and as horsemen, so shall they run. Like the noise 
of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, 
like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the 
stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Be- 
fore their face the people shall be much pained : all 
faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like 
mighty men ; they shall climb the wall like men of 
war ; and they shall march every one on his ways, 
and they shall not break their ranks ; neither shall 
one thrust another: they shall walk every one in 
his path ; and when they fall upon the sword, they 
shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in 
the city ; they shall run upon the wall, they shall 
climb up upon the houses ; they shall enter in at 
the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake 
before them ; the heavens shall tremble ; the sun 
and the moon shall be dark, and the stars ^lall with- 
draw their shining : and the Lord shall utter his voice 
before his army ; for his camp is very great ; for he 
is strong that executeth his word; for the day of 



820 EYES AND EARS. 

the Lord is great and very terrible ; and who can 
abide it?" 

But to return to the beginning of these remarks, 
it is not all, and altogether an annoyance. There 
is an element of the ludicrous attached to this annual 
incursion of worms. Every man's first duty on conn- 
ing into the house is to be picked. Among the kind 
offices of the church, the assembly room, is that of 
devermicularization. 

Unconscious beauty sits tranquil, while a vast 
worm is looping itself on the bonnet, another is navi- 
gating the shores of the lace collar, and several are 
apparently following the steps of illustrious search- 
ers for the poles. ^ 

On the whole, children set the best example. As 
a fair young mother was walking the other morning, 
she heard her little girl, not old enough to speak 
plainly, expressing her trouble : "I have lost my 
worm." She carried one in her hand as a pet, and 
mourned its loss. 

If we were educated to look upon things with eyes 
of philosophy, how much annoyance we might escape ! 
Is a gas-pipe repairing in the street ? So soon as we 
know that the insufferable stench is sulphuretted 
hydrogen, it has a scientific smell much more endur- 
able. If one will resolve noisome elements and dis- 
gustful odors into some chemical form, and regard 
them in their relations to the great economics of 
nature, it will aid their patience. 

Nevertheless, after considering worms in the light 
of entomology, of benevolence, of utility, together 
with all manner of illustrations from literature and 
history, we are constrained to admit that we are so 



PLEASUEE-RIDING. 321 

far uneducated as to regard their presence with some 
displacency, and to contemplate the early completion 
of their summer pilgrimage with an entire resigna- 
tion. Meantime, our blessings on the ailanthus-tree ! 
Let no man revile its odor, next month, without 
remembering that it was a bulwark against worms. 
Nothing can eat ailanthus, — nothing, we mean, ex- 
^cept a well-practised tobacco-chewer. He could eat 
anything. 



PLEASUKE-EIDING. 




T is astonishing how much pains people 
will take to be not-happy. Great sums of 
money are spent on disconsolate hearts, 
empty heads, restless, nervous indolents, — 
to make them happy. But, unless there is the quality 
of happiness in them, it is as vain as to beat upon lead 
in hope of music. How much money is lavished upon 
horses and splendid equipages, and how many sunny 
hours are witnesses of the unhappy creatures who 
affect happiness in their ostentatious parade ! If the 
heart be merry, it bubbles up and overflows with en- 
joyment without an efibrt. Did you ever take notice 
that unarranged and unexpected rides, uncouth and 
even- ridiculous, are productive of more real enjoy- 
ment than the best that are sought and expected ? 

Fix up your boys, and get out your best carriage, 
and take a regular ride, and ten to one next time you 
offer the chance they will say no. But when did a 
boy ever refuse a ride in an ox-cart? When did a 

14=* U 



322 EYES AND EARS. 

boy ever decline a ride to mill, on creaking cart, but 
above all, astride the plump bags of grain on horse- 
back ? Away with your fine turn-outs for sensible 
boys ! A lumber-wagon, an old cart, a stone dray, 
are better than any chariot. If a big brother or a 
kind " hired man " will give the boys a turn in a 
wheelbarrow, that will be superlative. There is an 
indescribable relish, too, in a pair of wheels, with two '*' 
boys hitched on before, and one upon the bare axle- 
tree, occupied alternately in tumbling off and getting 
on. But who shall tell or imagine the satisfaction of 
riding upon a jack or jenny ? It is plain that these 
creatures were created with special reference to boys' 
wants. They are tough, insensitive to the whip, self- 
opinionated, and in no danger whatever of being 
abused ; having a w^ay of using their heels and mouth 
that promotes humanity among boys. If the boys do 
not enjoy the exercise, every spectator does. The 
jenny on our premises is something larger than a rat, 
and of the same color. She goes where she has a 
mind to, stops when she pleases, throws the boys off 
when she is tired of them, turns around when they 
forbid, starts when they say, "Whoa!" and stops when 
they say, " Go 'long ! " A whip seems agreeable to her 
hide, rather than otherwise. She is so short that a 
moderate boy has to hold up his feet in riding ; and 
of course, in falling off, he has not so far to go as if 
on his own feet. It is amusing to see what an amount 
of work can be got out of a boy, for nothing, which 
would be considered a great hardship if applied to 
good uses. All the toil of riding Jenny applied to 
the garden would make almost a man's work for the 
day ! 



PLEASURE-RIDING. 823 

But we have reserved for the last the grand, tri- 
umphal ride ! When the cart has been stacked with 
sheaves, or loaded with hay, and towers high in the 
air, then let the importunate boy be lifted to its top, 
and come home embosomed in clover and fragrant 
hay ! No king has such triumphant entrances into 
rejoicing cities as boys have into barns, upon the 
broad backs of hay-carts ! It makes one quite melan- 
choly to see how much money is spent upon unhappy 
people to make them discontented ! Strip off their 
gentility, send them into the country, give them a 
plain cart, an ox-sled, or a harvest-wagon, and they 
will have sensations of pleasure long strangers to 
them ! Ah, Mr. Bonner, vainly do you drive forth 
behind the magnificent Lantern and mate, — flying 
through the air as if two stars whisked you at astro- 
nomical velocities ! The thing may be well enough 
in its way. But when you have tired of tliis, I have 
in reserve for you a crowning joy ! You shall mount 
my hay-cart ; and drawn by my oxen, — upon a 
springing load, softer than stutfed cushion or cimning 
springs, more fragrant than the gardens of the Orient, 
you shall be seen with radiant face, coming up the 
field, for once a perfectly happy man ! 



§24 EYES AND EARS. 




SUMMER RAIN. 

EN begin to look at the signs of weather. 
It is long since much rain fell. The ground 
is a little dry, the road is a good deal dusty. 
The garden bakes. Transplanted trees are 
thirsty. Wheels are shrinking and tires are looking 
dangerous. Men speculate on the clouds ; they begin 
to calculate how long it will be, if no rain falls, before 
the potatoes will suffer ; the oats, the corn, the grass, 
— everything ! To be sure, nothing is yet suffering ; 
but then — 

Rain, rain, rain ! All day, all night steady rain- 
ing. Will it never stop ? The hay is out, and spoil- 
ing. The rain washes the garden. The ground is 
full. All things have drunk their fill. The springs 
revive, the meadows are wet; the rivers run dis- 
colored with soil from every hill. Smoking cattle 
reek under the sheds. Hens, and fowl in general, 
shelter and plume. The sky is leaden. The clouds 
are full yet. The long fleece covers the mountains. 
The hills are capped in white. The air is full of 
moisture. Rain, rain, rain ! The wind roars down 
the chimney. The birds are silent. No insects chirp. 
Closets smell mouldy. The barometer is dogged. 
We thump it, but it will not get up. It seems to 
have an understanding with the weather. The trees 
drip, shoes are muddy, carriage and wagon are 
splashed with dirt. Paths are soft. So it is. When 
it is clear we want rain, and when it rains we wish it 
would shine. But, after all, how lucky for grumblers 



SUMMER RAIN. 325 

that they are not allowed to meddle with the weather, 
and that it is put above their reach ? What a scram- 
bling, selfish, mischief-making time we should have, 
if men undertook to parcel out the seasons and the 
weather according to their several humors or in- 
terests ! 

But if one will but look for enjoyment, how much 
there is in every change of weather. The formation 
of clouds, — the various signs and signals, the un- 
certain wheeling and marching of the fleecy cohorts, 
the shades of light and gray in the broken heav- 
ens, — all have their pleasure to an observant eye. 
Then come the wind-gust, the distant, dark cloud, 
the occasional fiery streak shot down through it, 
the run and hurry of men whose work may suffer ! 
Indeed, sir, your humble servant, even, was stirred 
up on the day after " Fourth of July^ The grass 
in the old orchard was not my best. Indeed, we 
grumbled at it considerably while it was yet stand- 
ing. ■ But being cut and the rain threatening it, one 
would have thought it gold, by the nimble way in 
which we tried to save it! 

Blessed be horse-rakes ! Once half a dozen men, 
with half a dozen rakes, would have gone whisking 
up and down, thrusting out and pulling in the long- 
handled rake, with slow and laborious progress. But 
no more of that. See friend Turner, mounted on 
the wheeled horse-rake, riding about as if for pleas- 
ure. Up go the steel teeth and drop their collected 
load, down go his feet, and the teeth are at work 
again ; and at every ten or fifteen feet, the winrow 
forms. It is easy times when men ride and horses 
rake ! No more hand-rakes, and no more revolving 
horse-rakes ! 



326 EYES AND EARS. 

Meanwhile, the clouds come bowling noiselessly 
through the air, and spit here and there a drop 
preliminary. But the hay is cocked, the sides dressed 
down, and all is ready — except the hay-covers 1 
Alas for our negligence ! The manufacturers had 
offered to send us some for trial, and we had for- 
gotten to say, Send them along ! And now, with 
our hay out and the rain coming, we mourned our 
carelessness. With good hay-covers, our two dozen 
little hay-cocks would have been as snug as if in 
the barn. Well, if one thing suffers, another gains ! 
See how the leaves are washed, the grass drinks, corn 
drinks, the garden drinks, everything drinks. It 's 
our opinion that everything except man is laughing 
and rejoicing. Trees shake their leaves with a softer 
sound. Rocks look moist and soft, at least where 
the moss grows. Even the solitary old pine-tree 
chords his harp, and sings soft and low melodies with 
plaintive undulations ! A good summer storm is a 
rain of riches. If gold and silver rattled down from 
the clouds, they would hardly enrich the land so 
much as soft, long rains. Every drop is silver going 
to the mint. The roots are machinery, and, catching 
the willing drops, they assay them, refine them, roll 
them, stamp them, and turn them out coined berries, 
apples, grains, and grasses ! When the heavens send 
clouds, and they bank up the horizon, be sure they 
have hidden gold in them. All the mountains of 
California are not so rich as are the soft mines of 
Heaven, that send down treasures upon man without 
tasking him, and pour riches upon his field without 
spade or pickaxe, — without his search or notice. 
Well, let it rain, then ! No matter if the journey 



MY TWO FRIENDS. 327 

is delayed, the picnic spoiled, the visit adjourned. 
Blessed be rain — and rain in summer ! And blessed 
be He who watereth the earth, and enricheth it for 
man and beast ! 






MY TWO FRIENDS. 

HAYE two friends whose habits illustrate 
two opposite principles. Both are ladies. 
Both have received the advantage of early- 
education, and have moved in good society. 
The one is of a slender form, elegantly made, of 
exquisite taste in dress, and with a rare sense of pro- 
priety in all matters. There are few that would 
venture to wear the articles that she sometimes will, 
yet with unerringly perfect judgment. It is scarcely 
right to call it judgment, since that implies a process 
of deliberation. But in her case it seems rather an 
intuition. Like a bird, she seems to wear gay plu- 
mage unconsciously ; as if it grew upon her. She is 
always dignified, and yet leaves the impression of 
always smiling upon you graciously. This is not that 
prepared smile of good society which, after a little, 
leaves a kind of threadbare kindness on the face, a 
seedy, lustreless smile. It is rather the shining out 
of unaffected kindness. If she meet you at church, in 
the street, at a party or concert, or in her own house, 
you feel that you have been shone upon. 

This does not result from that easy temper that can- 
not help itself, nor from a moral constitution that 
has feeble discriminations and preferences. On the 



328 EYES AND EARS. 

contrary, there are few persons more clear and posi- 
tive in their likes and dislikes, and with better 
grounds. She is herself a person of truth, of fidelity, 
of honor. The want of these qualities in others acts 
upon her as a discord. She is not warped by her 
general kindliness to compromise her clear percep- 
tion and calm judgment of what is right or wrong in 
the slightest degree. She is remarkably considerate, 
within her own thoughts, of the grounds of conduct 
and character in others, and is apt to be almost judi- 
cial in her deliberations about them. 

But — and here is the element for which I have 
drawn this outline — meeting those whom she does 
not like, whose conduct she condemns, there is 
toward them a quiet, cheerful politeness, that conceals 
her repugnance, that confers happiness, that leaves 
them quite ignorant of the gravity of her moral dis- 
sent. She seems to say, within herself, and I suspect 
this is about her own way of reasoning about it, — 
" This person seems to me both wrong and disagree- 
able. But he is a human being. As such I owe a 
debt of kindness to him. I must not, by word or act, 
approve the evil. But within that limit I am bound 
to confer innocent happiness. The law of conscience 
does not exonerate me from the duties of benevo- 
lence. So long, therefore, as we meet only in gen- 
eral society, and I am not called to sit in judgment, 
my only business is to treat such a one as if I wished 
him well, and would contribute my share of making 
him happy." 

I confess that I see nothing in this that is not just 
and Christian. It cannot be charged with insincerity. 
Every one is to feel and express kindness, even when 



MY TWO FRIENDS. 329 

exercising the functions of conscience, and much 
more under circumstances that call for the expres- 
sion of no moral judgments. 

I have another friend. She also has excellent taste. 
She is wise in selection of colors and in forms. I 
have never known her to wear a discordant article. 
And yet, such is the strength of her character and 
the energy of her nature, that one seldom thinks 
what she wears. The predominant impression which 
she leaves upon you is of character, and not of cos- 
tume. You do not remember her presence as of 
a sweet bird, but rather with that awe which you 
have while standing before an eagle. You respect 
her. You might revere her. You would hardly 
think of offering her help, though you might homage. 

This lady, too, has the most clear and positive 
opinions about those whom she meets. She likes no 
one, but loves many. She seldom dislikes any, but 
she abhors many. The doors of her heart are quite 
royal. Those who find them open are like a queen's 
guests, and are entertained with a very sovereignty 
of kindness. For their sakes upon whom she shines 
there can be no service too sacrificing, no deeds too 
onerous, no patience in their troubles too long-con- 
tinuing. 

To others those doors are like the portcullis of a 
king's castle in time of war. She will have no par- 
ley. They shall not come in. 

Tliere is seldom a doubt in any person's mind as 
to the ground they stand on. She makes people feel 
that she does not love them, nor like them, nor even 
tolerate them. She would not speak to them if she 
could help it. She has always seemed to me like 



330 EYES AND EARS. 

some very noble hills that 1 have seen, whose ap- 
proach on one side is easy, gradual, full of graceful 
lines, charming shrubs, and fine trees, but, on reach- 
ing the summit, the other side was a perpendicular 
cliff. For her friends she is a continuous garden, 
for her not-friends a precipice. 

If she were to be expostulated with upon her reso- 
lute way of meeting disagreeable people, she would 
probably answer, " I do not think it honest to make 
people think that I like them when I do not. I can- 
not reconcile it to my conscience to play a part." 
Thus it is a duty which she feels bound upon her to 
let people understand that they are no favorites. 

Is there, then, a judicial duty laid upon us, as 
members of society, to sit in judgment upon each 
other, and to execute the sentence of our disappro- 
bation ? May, or may not, a person make those 
cheerful and happy by personal graciousness whom 
one for many reasons condemns inwardly ? Where 
is Addison ? Where is Steele ? Where is Dr. John- 
son? I desire to lay before them this question, — 
Ought not a person's face, like God's sun, to shine 
kindly upon the just and the unjust ? 



EMBODIED JOKES. •331 




EMBODIED JOKES. 

AS not Nature an element of the ludicrous 
in it? Are there no creations which may 
be regarded as mere quizzical oddities? 
What else can you make of the world- 
renowned Jack ? Can any man look into his face 
without an irresistible temptation to laughter? Was 
ever anything more expressly made to be grotesque 
than a toad? What thing of all the barbarous in- 
ventions in Chinese pictures can surpass it in ridic- 
ulousness? Did you ever attentively study toad life 
and manners ? You might do worse. At evening, 
when they begin to feel the inspiration of an evening 
meal, you shall find them awkwardly alert, and very 
entertaining. Their squat forms and ungainly move- 
ments, the very decorous and earnest sobriety with 
which they carry themselves, the peculiar wink with 
which they seem to intimate to you that they are 
keeping up a good deal more thinking inside than 
you might suppose, their imperturbable and unex- 
citable passivity, produce a comical result hardly 
equalled by any clown. 

The bat is another jest in natural history. Its 
flight is the only redeeming feature of its ungracious 
form and manner. Even that has a capriciousness in 
it that savors of gambolling. Its voice is a squeak, 
its mouth a burlesque upon humanity. 

The monkey has been set apart for ridiculousness 
the world over. He is an organized sarcasm upon 
the human race, with variations multitudinous. 



332* EYES AND EAES. 

But among insects, and among beetles especially, 
are found forms so singular, and manners so queer, 
that we never pass them without stopping to look ; 
and we never look without a sense of the ludicrous. 

But who ever saw, on land or in water, a crab, or 
a lobster, without being struck with their comicality ! 
If these things address themselves to a feeling of the 
ludicrous in our minds, is it extravagant to suppose 
that they sprung from some such thought in the 
Creative Mind ? It seems no more strange that God 
should create objects for mirth in the world, than 
that he should have placed the faculty of mirthful- 
ness in the human mind. Is any faculty without 
provision for its enjoyment ? Is it not rather to be 
supposed that, both in the vegetable and the animal 
kingdom, there are forms and processes which will 
never be fully appreciated until their relations to 
the feeling of mirth is recognized ? We do not know 
that laughing philosophers are desirable : philoso- 
phers who do not know how to laugh are still less 
likely to be complete. 

It is sometimes thought that there are no qualities 
of mirthfulness in nature ; that it is purely in the 
mind of those who imagine it. Doubtless it is the 
mind that experiences the emotion ; but so it is of 
color, of form, of grace. And these qualities will 
abound to those who are sensitive to their presence, 
and, on the other hand, will seem rare to those less 
admirably endowed. But no one, on that account, 
supposes that color is imaginary, — that there is no 
provision for it in nature. And because only the 
mirthful easily appreciate the ludicrousness of many 
parts of animated creation, it does not any more fol- 



CHANGES. 



333 



low that the oddity is subjective, depending merely 
upon the observer, and not in the designed and real 



nature of things. 



CHANGES. 




UR days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant 
a change takes place in the contents. New 
harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations 
of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice 
alike. The most familiar people stand each moment 
in some new relation to each other, to their work, to 
surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with 
the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost 
regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diver- 
sities. And much more is the vexed and agitated 
flow of society but an ever changing, ever new com- 
plexity ! The most familiar scenes are full of novelty 
to one who has an eye to see it ! 

But we are dozing, stupid, unobserving. We pass 
along in a waking dream. We look without seeing. 
We listen without hearing. Birds flit among the 
trees, a fly lights upon the page before us, and 
throws his thin shadow over the next word. An- 
other comes to meet him, they meet with an enthu- 
siastic buzz of satisfaction, and whirl off into the air ' 
with a delirium of gladness. We only brush at the 
intruder. The grass is twinkling with innumerous 
gems of dew. Every motion of your head is a new 
glory upon its shadow. The wind that just breathes 
around the corner, and shakes it, seems to come on 
purpose to show you the wreath of simple beauty ! 



834 EYES AND EAKS. 

The shadows all day long play at silent games of 
beauty. Everything is double, if it stands in light. 
The tree sees an unrevealed and muffled self lying 
darkly along the ground. The slender stems of flow- 
ers, golden-rod, wayside asters, meadow daisies, and 
rare lilies (rare and yet abundant, in every level 
meadow), cast forth a dim and tremulous line of 
shadow, that lies long all the morning, shortening till 
noon, and creeping out again from the root all the 
afternoon, until the sun shoots it as far eastward in 
the evening as the sun shot it westward in the morn- 
ing. A million shadowy arrows such as these spring 
from Apollo's golden bow of light at every step. Fly- 
ing in every direction, they cross, interlacing each 
other in a soft network of dim lines. 

Meanwhile the clouds drop shadow-like anchors, 
that reach the ground, but will not hold ; every brows- 
ing creature, every flitting bird, every moving team, 
every unconscious traveller, writes itself along the 
ground in dim shadow. 

Nor are sounds less numerous, changing, and novel. 
At no instant, if one gives his mind to it, is there 
stillness or sameness. As I sit by my wmdow, a door 
sounds, the gate rattles, a man's foot crackles on the 
gravel, a fly buzzes round my head, a song-sparrow 
sings sweet in yonder apple-tree, a whiplash cuts 
sharply through the air, a boy halloos at the team, 
another boy turns the rustling paper, and sings a 
snatch of song over and over with intolerable itera- 
tion, — a rooster crows, a bee hums under the win- 
dow, saying grace before proceeding to breakfast. 
Now comes a lull. I listen for silence. No. A calf 
calls out for its mother, another answers it. A far-off 



CHANGES. 335 

rooster crows, and sets oif a dozen more in various 
directions ! The train roars with softened sound from 
the distance. New birds are discoursing: a plank 
falls down with resounding clap. A robin calls out, 
" What 's that ? " The kingbird sings witli a jolly 
noise, that sounds like a rich man shaking his pocket 
full of silver. The pigs are up and at it. An old 
lien is reading a barnyard homily to her unobservant 
attendants. Down goes a load of stones with a mis- 
cellaneous clash and rattle. The barnyard wooden- 
latched gate has a blunt snap. A chipping-bird flies 
down to a crumb of bread with a simple troll of ex- 
quisite notes. A wagon rolls along the road. A voice 
from the hill-side beyond comes soft and mellow hith- 
erward. Should I write till the sun goes down, at 
every instant some new or changing sound would be 
recorded. And yet in the great room of Nature 
nothing is discordant, if we only are in tune. All 
harsh and grating noises, all low piping, all crack and 
crash, all piercing calls or bird warblings, all rustling 
sounds of leaves or dress, all slammings, rippings, 
jinglings, shouts, every plash and creak, are harmoni- 
ous parts of one great orchestra, and when mingled in 
the multitude, they seem to wear each other smooth, 
so that the general hum of evening or ,the sharper 
sounds of noon fall upon the ear with a sense of har- 
mony ! 

The endless variety and harmony of forms, the 
inexhaustible wealth of colors, the by-play of animal 
and insect life, the movements and industries of men, 
in the midst of this gorgeously decorated earth, these 
all fill up the tube and make each day but a rolling 
kaleidoscope, each moment brilliant with some new 
combination. 



836 EYES AND EARS. 

But few witness this perpetual wonder. The world 
is dull and life is tame to most men. Nothing has 
merit which does not in some way address the appe- 
tite, the feverish desires. Men are sotted with vul- 
gar business. Nothing seems worthy that has not 
some relation to them. This egotism punishes it- 
self. It separates between the soul and God's mu- 
nificent provision for its satisfaction. We live in 
a palace, and call it dull. We have every delight 
for the senses, and yawn with ennui ! We have 
myriad servants, each with some minute fidelity, yet 
we are always unserved ! If one could but hold up 
the innumerable events of each hour in the golden 
light, — if the world were to them God's book, and 
each day an opening leaf, and every event a rev- 
elation, — no one would need to search for pleasure. 
To those who have susceptibility, an appreciation of 
things beautiful simply because they fall from the 
hand of God, and are significant of his taste or feel- 
ing, there is an unwasting satisfaction, placed beyond 
the contingencies of human affairs. When I am a 
bankrupt, and my creditor takes my property, he 
shall have the house, the ground, the furniture, the 
things on which men lay tax ; but I shall laugh at 
him if he thinks he has touched my properties ! 
Above my roof are finer pictures than are under it. 
In tlie trees and along the meadows I have winged 
instruments which a sheriff will hardly catch ! Clouds 
are better property than lies hidden in the veins of 
the hills over which they cast their solemn shadows ! 
My fancy is a plough that turns better furrows than 
the best inventor's, and sows the open soil of air 
with harvests more abundant than all that store the 



DRIVING FAST HORSES FAST. 337 

barns of the world. And these treasures for the 
finer senses are withont cares, without envy, without 
taxes. Storms do not damage, and fires do not burn 
them. They never waste, they change only to grow 
better. They are young with my youth, young iu 
my manliood, and young in age ! 



DRIVING FAST HORSES FAST. 




Y DEAR Mr. Bonner : You once promised 
me a ride with your never-to-be-excelled 
horses, and to-day is the very day for it. 
The sky is clear. It is a long while since 
we have had high, bright, clear days. They have 
been sad and cloudy. Sometimes snow, sometimes 
rain, sometimes a miserable compromise between 
both. But to-day is of one mind, and that a good 
mind. Nature is iil her sweet and grand mood. It 
is the first day on which she has cared to have, it 
known that her minid was made up to have spring 
weather. The secret is out now. Snow is melting. 
I saw grass with fresh growth of green this very 
morning. No birds yet. But the grass said birds as 
plainly as if it had spoken English. They cannot be 
far off. 

Is not this a day for a ride ? No mud yet. The 
road is hard and moist. Just the kind for a spin. 
For I do not want any of your lazy, jogging gaits. 1 
am entirely of your mind, that, if a horse has had 
swiftness put in him, it is fair to give him a chance 

15 V 



838 EYES AND EARS. 

to develop his gifts. Of course there is a bound. 
Reason in all things. Even in trotting, it is easier 
and pleasanter for some horses to go twelve miles an 
hour than for others to go three. They were made 
so. Does it hurt a swallow to go swifter than an ox ? 
Why not ? Because he was made so. It is easy to 
do the thing we were made to do easily. ^ And a good 
liorse was made on purpose to go fast. He does it 
when wild of his own accord. He does not lose the 
relish of speed, even when domesticated. 

Take a fine-fed horse, who in harness looks as if 
he were a pattern of moderation, a very deacon of 
sobriety, and turn him loose in pasture. Wht;W, 
what a change! He takes one or two steps slowly, 
just to be sure that you have let go of him, and then 
with a squeal he lets fly his heels high in the air, till 
the sun flashes from his polished shoes, and then oiF 
lib goes, faster and fiercer, clear across the lot, till the 
fence brings him up. And then, his eye flashing, his 
mane lifted and swelling, his tail up like a king's 
sceptre, he snorts a defiance to you from afar, and, 
with a series of roarings, running sideways, pawing 
and plungings, friskings and whirls, he starts again, 
with immense enjoyment, into another round of run- 
ning. Do you not see that it is more than fun ? It 
is ecstasy. It is horse rapture ! 

I never see such a spectacle that I am not painfully 
impressed with the inhumanity of not letting horses 
run. Fastness is a virtue. Our mistaken moderation 
is depriving him of it. I drive fast on principle. I 
do it for the sake of being at one Tvith nature. To 
drive slow, only and always, is to treat a horse as 
if he were an ox. You may be slow if you think 



DRIVING FAST HORSES FAST. 839 

proper. But jour horse should be kept up to nature. 
He would have had but two legs if it was raeant that 
he should go only on a " go-to-meeting " pace. He 
has four legs. Of course he "ought to do a great deal 
with them. 

Now why do I say these things to you? Not to 
convince you of your duty. But I feared lest, tak- 
ing me out to ride, you would be disposed to think 
that I had scruples, and would jog along moderately, 
as if doing me a favor. Not at all. The wind does 
not go fast enough to suit me. If I were engineer 
of a sixty-mile-an-hour express train, I should covet 
twenty miles an hour more. 

Let the horses be well groomed, — well harnessed. 
Let the wagon be thoroughly looked to, — no screw 
loose, no flaw just ready to betray us. Mount. I am 
by your side. The whip is not needed. Yet let it 
stand in its place, the graceful hint of authority in 
reserve, which is always wholesome to men and 
horses. 

Now get out of town cautiously. No speed here. 
This i«a place for sobriety, moderation, and propriety 
in driving. But, once having shaken off the crowd, I 
give you a look, and disappear instantly in a wild 
excitement, as if all the trees were crazy, and had 
started off in a race, as if the fences were chalk-lines, 
as if the earth and skies were commingled, and every- 
thing were wildly mixed in a supernatural excite- 
ment, neither of earth nor of the skies ! 

The wind has risen since we started. It did not 
blow at this rate, surely ! These tears are not of sor- 
row. But really this going like a rocket is new to 
every sense. Do not laugh if I clutch the seat more 



340 



EYES AND EARS. 



firmly. I am not afraid. It is only excitement. You 
may be used to this bird's business of flying". But 
don't draw the rein. I am getting calm. See that 
play of muscle ! Splendid machinery was put into 
these horses. Twenty horse-power at least in each ! 
And how they enjoy it ! No forcing here. They do 
it to please themselves, and thank you for a chance ! 
Look at that head ! Those ears speak like a tongue ! 
The eyes flash with eagerness and will ! Is it three 
miles ? Impossible ! It is not more than half a mile ! 
Well, draw up. Let me get off now, and see 
these brave creatures. What ! not enough yet ? No 
painful puffing, no throbbing of the flanks. They 
step nervously, and champ the bit, and lean to your 
caresses, as if they said : '' All this we have done to 
please you; now just let us go on to please our- 
selves ! '' 



FENCE-COENERS. 




T makes a great difference whether we look 
at things with an exact business eye, or 
with the eye of poetry and beauty. If one 
sees a thistle in his mowing-lot, he runs at 
it as if it were a venomous animal. But if saun- 
tering through the pastures, and in an appreciative 
mood he sees a thistle growing strongly where it 
will harm no one, and will scatter seeds only in the 
wild field, he begins to note more considerately its 
vigor, its stateliness, its robust health, and its regal 
blossom. It is, indeed, the very king of weeds. 



FENCE-COKNERS. 341 

And, like true royalty, it is guarded at every branch 
and every leaf by spines more efficacious in produ- 
cing respect in those approaching it, than, marshals' 
wands or guardsmen's halberts. For ourselves, we 
like a real thistle of the thistliest kind ; none of your 
fine, lathy Canada-thistles, that grow in flocks, and 
have fecundity at the top and immortality at the bot- 
tom ; but a real, rousing, stalwart, old-fashioned this- 
tle two yards high, and of a spread that gives it some 
claims as a tree ! 

But all this is mere illustration. We were saying 
how differently things looked according to the spirit 
in which we look at them. And we were going to 
apply this to fence-corners, or rather to the wild- 
weed hedges which form along old stone-walls or 
crooked rail-fences. 

Now it cannot be denied, that, from the stand-point 
of clean and thorough farming, such hedges are dis- 
graceful. They represent the carelessness or the 
indolence of the farmer. But if one will cease to 
be an agricultural critic, and allow himself some lat- 
itude of charitable complacency, he will find much 
to admire. Indeed, we may as well own it, we love 
wild, neglected, rampant-growing weed hedges ! 

One gets tired of too much regularity. Potatoes 
in rows, cabbages in squat rows, beans in rows, tur- 
nips drilled in rows, corn in rows, orchards in rows, 
everything in rows — one begins to feel th6 graceless 
stiffness, and to long for some irregularity and variety. 
This the eye gets abundantly in the weedy hedge. 
Here is no prim order. " First come, first served," 
is the only law here. " Blessed be the strong ! " 
is the motto of the weed-row. And one will notice 

r 



842 EYES AND EARS. 

that nothing in all the fields is apt to be half so 
robust and healthy as are the heathen plants of the 
hedge. The plough of the careless farmer has, from 
year to year, thrown the furrow one way, and mould 
has collected near the fence. The flying dust, too, 
has been caught and washed down there. Then every 
year returns to the ground again the whole summer's 
deciduous growth, to decay and enrich the soil. Be- 
sides this, birds are not ungrateful for shelter and ber- 
ries, and make their contributions of cheerful guano. 
And so it comes to pass that the richest part of all 
the fieM is its boundary. 

Here, then, we shall find what vegetation can do. 
Great, rank weeds spread their succulent arms to 
point in pity at the starveling crops which the lazy 
farmer is eking out of the starved soil. Just so it is 
in towns and cities. You shall see mighty natures 
springing up in the hedgerows of society, and over- 
topping with their vigorous growth all the puny crea- 
tures that are faintly growing in feeble civilization. 

There is a wild liberty, too, in the hedge, that 
excites pleasure. Here is no master. Everything 
thrives according to its own nature. No envious 
hoe decimates, no partial tillage cuts one and culti- 
vates another. Everything is left to show its own 
force and nature, unhelped and unhindered. This 
would be distasteful in a whole field where we look 
for husbandry. But, as a contrast, it is all the more 
striking in the belt around the edges. 

In this little forest you shall find often the fairest 
flowers. Here the golden-rod multiplies its roots and 
sends up its golden-branched tops in graceful profu- 
sion. Asters compete with it. The raspberry curves 



FENCE-CORNERS. 343 

over in exquisite lines. And the creeping blackberry 
yields the most beautiful festoons of white blossoms 
mixed with exquisite leaves that you shall find in the 
whole world. The blackberry is a thousand times 
sweeter when eaten with the eyes, by its blossoms and 
leaves, than ever afterwards when it yields winy ber- 
ries. Here, too, bindweed, ironweed, unsociable this- 
tles, an occasional hawthorn, tufts of grass like a stack 
of spears, convolvulus, gold-thread, and I know not 
how many other graceful or graceless things, tower, 
or twine, or creep. 

It is the very aviary, too, of the farm. Sparrows 
love the weedy thicket. Birds hunt through it, build 
in it, and find it both larder and nursery. Nor are 
they the only inmates. It is the very Jerusalem of 
insects. All nimble worms creep about in it. Long- 
legged spiders meditate profound metaphysics there, 
and express themselves clearly in cobwebs, and for 
amusement eat each other up. Crickets in their 
season abound. Every stone has under it a colony. 
Mice squeak in their little galleries. Squirrels dance 
along the top or move in and out of the chinks of the 
wall. And all manner of things seem to feel that 
here in this neglected place, where no law rules, no 
plough comes, no sickle, but only nature rules, there 
is for them a city of refuge, a dwelling of liberty ! 

Let others pish and pshaw ! We shall still love the 
weedy hedge along the neglected fence. Nor will we 
forget, that chance-sown seeds have there brought 
forth some of the noblest fruits of the orchard and the 
garden ! Out of the fence-corners of society, too, 
come often its very noblest men. It is a good soil to 
grow strong things in ! 



EYES AND EARS. 



AGRICULTUK-AL PAPER. 




R. BONNER: You have sent me, on sev- 
eral occasions, parts of letters, from some 
of your innumerable subscribers, requesting 
sometimes one thing and sometimes another. 
Now, it' is a correction oi fact; then, a dissent of 
opinion. The last one, if I rightly remember, thinks 
that I am just the man to write some interesting arti- 
cles upon agriculture ! Let that discreet and virtuous 
man, and all who are of his sagacious turn of mind, 
now follow me ! I shall go forth for my first article. 

With our faces to the north, let us ascend the gen- 
tle acclivity. Pass by the strawberry-bed on the 
right, the grassy old orchard, with a few venerable 
remnants of trees, bearing apples in a state of nature, 
ungrafted, on the left, we come to the stone-wall be- 
yond which lies the field and theme of our first paper 
on agriculture. And now, before proceeding, let me 
request you to send this paper to the various agricul- 
tural papers ; to the several colleges in which an agri- 
cultural department is maintained; to Professor Liebig, 
Boussingault (if alive), Johnston (who published an 
admirable volume of lectures on agriculture, without 
an index, and where, in chase of a fact or statement, 
a man might as well run through all Oregon after an 
undescribed man or tree ! Such books are a nuisance 
and an abomination, wasters of time, provokers of 
temper, and so wicked ; now please help me over the 
fence of this bracket into the main-road of my re- 
mark, if you please), and to other eminent dignities 



AGRICULTUKAL PAPER. 345 

agricultural, of whom my friend Saxton will give you 
a list. Now, then, for it. My subject is Pumpkins ! 

The spelling of this word is various. Pompion, 
Pumpkin, Punkin ; Webster first gives Pompion. 
When I came to this, I had liked to have changed 
sides, and gone over to the Worcester man on the 
Dictionary question. For Webster was a Connecticut 
man, and to spell pumpkin pompion, could be noth- 
ing less than contempt for the usages of the commu- 
nity in which he was brought up. It was an act of 
orthographical treason Arnoldian. (Arnold, too, was 
a Connecticut Yankee. The fact is sometimes alleged 
against the virtuous fame of my birth-State. Just 
the contrary. Such men lurk in the blood of every 
State. But not every one, like Connecticut, has mor- 
al health to drive them out of the blood to the skin. 
The very appearance of a rogue in Connecticut is evi- 
dence of the purity of the blood that rids itself thus 
of disease.) But that word Pompion. Webster, sly 
and cautious man, instantly follows up that spelling 
with the true one, — Pumpkin. Have I not, a hun- 
dred times, stood up in the spelling-classes in the vil- 
lage school, where, drawn up in battle, in opposite 
ranks, sweet girls spelled the boys, and the boys mis- 
spelled the girls, and thundered out the right spelling, 
p-u-m-p — pump ; k-i-n — PUNArm ! On looking a sec- 
ond time, I see that Mr. Webster spells pompion with 
a w, pwmpion. This is an evasion, a disingenuous 
compromise. If one wishes to say pompion at all, let 
him say it boldly with full vowels. But to throw out 
the o, and give it a pumpkin flavor by inserting a 
softer w is a trick that will not succeed, and ought 
uot. 

15* 



346 EYES AND EARS. 

But now notice his definitions. " Pumpion (Dan- 
ish, Jf?o«j•J9o^/^; Swedish, pomp, a gourd). A plant and 
its fruit of the genus Cucurbita." This is all ! Next, 
pumpkin is defined " a pompion," and that is every 
word that Mr. Webster says of this New England 
institution ! Not a syllable of uses, origin, culture, 
nature, poetry, history, associations, relations, aspect ; 
and not one word of that more than Olympic day, 
Thanksgiving, when ])umpkins were apotheosized ! 
Why, on that immortal, gustatory day, Connecticut 
from time immemorial has stood, not like heathen Bac- 
chus, wreathed with leaves of grape, and crowned with 
purple clusters, but like a Christian Puritan, as she is, 
with a pumpkin for her head, glowing with ripe yel- 
low lustre, delightful and delicious to all devout boys ! 
Let all that are interested in lexicography look well 
to such instances of concealed defection as this of 
Webster's. Would one trust a man with the English 
tongue, whose own tongue was so false to every sylla- 
ble of his early experience, — pumpkin-pie, pumpkin- 
butter, pumpkin-molasses, and all other shades and 
forms of its benevolent existence ? Until something 
is done on this pumpkin question, Mr. Merriam (not 
aqueous E. M., but bibliopolic G. M.) must not look 
to me for any further countenance. I will never sup- 
port a dictionary that is false to pumpkins ! It may 
be that the Quarto Pictorial Edition has both a pic- 
ture and a definition worthy of my theme. If so, I 
am appeased. But a man that does not believe iu 
pumpkins, must be a squash. 

As to the derivation of this word, we need not go 
back to Danish or Swedish sources. If anything in 
this world is English, pumpkin is that thing ! And it 



AGRICULTURAL PAPER. 347 

is not to be supposed that either the Danes or Swedes 
knew EngHsh before we did ourselves. No. The 
origin is on the very face of the word. The very 
family of words, immediately preceding this one in 
Webster, is Pump, defined to be a " hydraulic engine 
for raising water." That is exactly the function of 
pumpkin, and from that, without question, its ^ame 
is derived. I know that in the Spanish bomha cor- 
responds to the French pompe, and means a pump 
and a bomb. Some may think that the resemblance 
of a pumpkin to a bomb gave rise to its name. It 
has a formidable resemblance, and is filled, too, with 
seeds, that, when it descends from any height, and 
splits, fly about with much of the alacrity which 
belongs to the spices with which military bombs are 
stuffed. But this ingenious etymology cannot stand. 
Pumpkins existed long before bombs, and must have 
had a name. It is much more likely that the bomb 
was named from the pumpkin. Indeed, the bomb is a 
pumpkin of war, growing upon its lava soil, and filled 
with terrific seeds of ruin ! 

Having cleared away this rubbish, we are now 
ready for our pumpkins, which shall be served next 
week. 



848 EYES AND EARS. 



THE PUMPKIN FAMILY. — ITS RELATIVES AND 

RIVALS. 




HE pumpkin is in the situation of a hero 



without a poet or liistorian. Its merits 
are worthy of renown. But it has found 
no worthy eulogist. Its vine indeed is a 
little coarse, as compared with the clematis, the 
honeysuckle, or the convolvulus. What great hands 
it holds up to the sun, broad, succulent, rough ! 
And the leaf-stalk, is it not the trumpet, the cheap 
squirt-gun, the blow-pipe, and I know not what else, 
of ingenious boyhood? 

The pumpkin-vine has a flowery and rhetorical 
way with it quite admirable. Other vines seem to 
require premeditation and a good deal of prepara- 
tion, before they spread themselves abroad. But 
the pumpkin-seed may be dropped in any corn-field, 
or in a mere hedgerow, and it waits but a few days 
before it lifts up the soil, and emits two great, hon- 
est, spoon-shaped leaves, that stand looking about in 
simple surprise, as if the world looked greatly differ- 
ent from what they expected. But this pause upon 
the threshold of active life, this modest reserve, is 
becoming in both boy and pumpkin. Then it throws 
forth its vine, and runs boldly over the ground with 
a luxuriance comfortable to behold. No laggard is 
it; no stingy grower, needing to be nursed and 
coaxed and cossetted. You see vigor in the very 
seed. The first germ prophesies large growth, and 
every runner confirms and fulfils the prophecy. The 



THE PUMPKIN FAMILY. 349 

blossom, too, is in hearty sympathy with the whole 
vine. It is no dainty thing, appealing to your ad- 
miration through a sentiment of pity ; it is no pale, 
slender, fragile, city-bred beauty, that might blow 
away, or the sun drink up like a drop of dew. The 
pumpkin-blossom is large and buxom, open-hearted, 
a refuge for bees, that fly into it with open wings, 
and work around its nectaries in a golden dust, and 
so overload themselves with sweets as often to for- 
get their homeward duties, and, like sailors in some 
tropic island, desert their ship to live in the luxury 
of overmastering sweets. And so you shall find dis- 
sipated flies and shrewish wasps and wanton bees 
intoxicated with the abundance, and even dying in 
an ecstasy of pumpkin-blossom. 

But in due time behold the fruit. Even when 
green it is delightsome to the eyes. The unstinted 
fulness of the great, round, plump fellow; then the 
exquisite veining when the forces of Nature begin to 
change green to orange, and a network of green 
lines among yellow surfaces surpasses in ingenuity 
and frolicsome beauty anything that Raphael ever 
formed in arabesque, or Cellini traced upon his curi- 
ously wrought goblets. Indeed, every artistic gold- 
smith should attentively study the pumpkin. Its 
foundation color is quite in his way. Its lines are 
finer than he can fashion, and its meshes of green 
and gold, netting the great orb with an entangle- 
ment of figures that would have brought a Moorish 
artist to his knees 'in admiration. 

Indeed, no one can have attentively studied Moor- 
ish architecture without perceiving that many of its 
principal features, its domes, its traceries, were bor- 



350 EYES AND EARS. 

rowed from the pumpkin! What is the magnificent 
dome of St. Peter's but the highest development of 
that idea which you shall see expressed or hinted in 
every well-conditioned pumpkin ! Thus a few acan- 
thus-leaves, touched by human genius, gave us the 
Corinthian capital. The arches of the forest, we 
are sometimes told, are the primitive types of Gk)thic 
architecture. Do not leaves, stems, roses, fleur-de- 
luces, sunflowers, clover-leaves, and scores of other 
things, furnish to architecture its richest decorations ? 
But it was reserved to the pumpkin to crown the 
whole, by giving to architects the conception of a 
ribbed dome. 

Thus it is that modest merit often finds itself hon- 
ored. And, much as the pumpkin is used as a term 
of ridicule, whoever saw a pumpkin that seemed to 
quail or look sheepish ? How do they swell their 
great honest sides, warm with the autumn sun, as 
if they would say. As long as St. Peter's stands, and 
lifts the glorified and perfected pumpkin into the air, 
so long let every honest pumpkin hold up its head 
and be proud of its illustrious position ! Who doubt, 
that the color, too, of the pumpkin suggested the 
practice of gilding domes ? Indeed, architects awoke 
to the form and the color of magnificent domes when 
they intelligently studied the pumpkin. And one 
need not travel in foreign lands, to Mecca or Damas- 
cus, to see the mosques gleaming in the sunliglit. 
Let him, when the corn has been cut from tlie field, 
and the whole expanse is aglow with radiant pump- 
kins, sit him down, and, like a true poet, letting the 
coarser substance of the scene subside, imagine him- 
self gazing upon a city so far removed that its spires, 



THE PUMPKIN FAMILY. 351 

minarets, and domes are in proportion to the objects 
before him. That single stem of corn is a spire, that 
clump of tall-growing reeds is a palace piercing the 
sky in many forms of tower, while golden domes glit- 
ter in wondrous magnificence as often as his imagina- 
tion can transform a pumpkin into the ribbed orb of 
a stately mosque ! 

Among the ways which mefi employ to sustain their 
respectability, none is more common than an exhibi- 
tion of their social connections. One whose cousin is 
a governor, whose uncle is a general, whose brother 
has been to Congress, cannot but stand well in soci- 
ety. Reputation is of the nature of a vine, and our 
reputable relatives are so much brush or trellis on 
which we run up. And every one knows how much 
more of a figure a blossom or a fruit cuts when lifted 
up in the air, than when lying half concealed in grass, 
or spattered on the bare ground. Now the pumpkin, 
had it no merits of its own, would yet hold up its head 
on account of its eminent relations. 

The old family name, of great antiquity and re- 
nown, is Cucurbitacece. There were at least sixty 
branches of this family, and at least three hundred 
several special households with family names. 

Who has not heard of the cucumber? All round 
the world it is used for pickles, for salad, and for ex- 
citing the ambition of gardeners. The first cucumber 
of the season, how many retired gentlemen, amateur 
gardeners, and regular cultivators compete for the 
honor of producing it ! The excellent and amiable 
melon family, also known the world around. I refer 
to the Cucumis melo^ or muskmelon, alias cantaloupe, 
alias nutmeg, alias Persian melon, which is a near 



352 EYES AND EARS. 

kinsman of the pumpkin. So also is the Cucumis 
citrullus, or watermelon, a venerable relative. What 
living family of men can trace blood connections 
higher up the course of time than the homely rela- 
tions of the melon ? For is not the watisrmelon the 
very thing which brought tears to the eyds of the poor 
spiritless Jews, as they wandered in the wilderness ? 
This is the record (Num. xi. 4, 5) : " And the chil- 
dren of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall 
give us flesh to eat ? We remember the fish which we 
did eat in Egypt freely ; the cucumbers, and the mel- 
ons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic." 

But let no one severely reprove them. In a hot 
day, if you have been tramping along a shadeless 
road, until every drop of moisture seems to have run 
out of you, tired, dusty, hungry, thirsty, and faint, 
you sit down for a rest in some nook. The vision of 
your father's house rises, — first, the mossy well and 
dripping bucket, then the melon-patchy out of which 
your boyish arms used to bring, with much panting, 
early in the morning, the night-cooled, heavy water- 
melon, moist all over its black-green skin with dew; 
you remember the platter, the great carving-knife, — 
the crackle-slit of the knife, the two halves that, rol- 
ling each way, opened to your eyes the exquisite pink 
and red of the pulpy centre, whose vesicles of sugary 
juice glistened in the light with gentle invitation. 
Tell me, stoutest heart, did you not then involun- 
tarily lick your own lips, and feel your whole mouth 
water ? Then why should you revile the poor 
Jews, because the memory of melons made their 
eyes water ? 

And here, Mr. Bonner, although your paper is not 



THE PUMPKIN FAMLY. 353 

designed for Biblical criticism, I desire to express my 
conviction that the passage in Isaiah i. 8 is mistrans- 
lated. Zion is said to be left " as a lodge in a gar- 
den of cucumbers.''^ They have confounded Cucumis 
sativus with C. citrullus. What boy ever was silly 
enough to rob a cucumber patch ? No. It is the 
melon, the watermelon patch, that sends mortal her- 
esy into boys' faith of property rights. And, without 
a doubt, human nature and watermelons were the 
same among the Jews as in our day. The lodge was 
evidently a place where the old gentleman hid him- 
self with a long whip ; and when*the rollicking chaps, 
stealing along, looking on every side, peeping and spy- 
ing, conclude that the dog is tied up, the old man 
asleep, and the whole coast clear, begin to spoil, — 
then out of his hiding-place he bolts, and comes down 
on them with such slashing welts, such piercing snap- 
pers, such lash-girders, and but-end thwacks, that 
the wretches, scattering with incredible speed, dive 
into the thicket, and bolt over the fence, as if each 
watermelon were a bomb, and with untimely explo- 
sion accelerated their retreat ! 

I ask you, Mr. Bonner, whether my view of this 
passage does not bear the truth upon its very face ? 

The squash family are of the same blood as the 
pumpkin. Indeed, this squash family have a sneak- 
ing ambition to supersede the pumpkin. Squash-pie 
and winter squashes take on airs at the table, and 
claim a seat much above their venerable predecessor. 
As for squash-pies, they are all very well for folks 
that have never eaten pumpkin. I must admit, that 
there are some members of this great family not pre- 
sentable in good society. But in so large a connec- 

w 



854 EYES AND EARS. 

tion is there not always some graceless fellow, some 
rogue, robber, or cunning swindler ? There was Co- 
locynth, and there was a Bryonia, and several other 
names of a bitter kind, who invariably cleared out 
any persons who took them in. 

But if we were to come to the very marrow of this 
matter, what pen could recount the world's indebted- 
ness to the pumpkin, for rich milk in pumpkin-fed 
cows, for pumpkin-sauce, for pumpkin-butter, pump- 
kin-molasses, and, above all, pumpkin-pies ! But that 
is a subject too intimately connected with our patriotic 
associations, and witfh too many family scenes, to be 
treated at this end of an article. I prefer to meditate 
in expressive silence, or to be inspired with a separate 
article ! 

P. S. — This article is to be considered as my sec- 
ond paper on husbandry. 

2d P. S. — I began by saying that the pumpkin had 
no poet. The following stanza may seem to disprove 
the assertion : — 

*' Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater. 
Had a wife, and could n't keep her ; 
He put her in a pumpkin-shell, 
And there he kept her very well." 

This beautiful scrap stands in our literature with- 
out a name. Whether part of a larger poem by some 
Tupper, or only the sport of the moment, is unknown. 
But it is plain the author meant to sing the domestic 
infelicity and victorious discipline of Peter, aaid not 
the merits of pumpkin. That is merely incidental. 



AUTTOIN COLORS. 355 



AUTUMN COLORS. 




HEN stone, timber, or muck are to be 
drawn, then a farm on a level plain is 
sighed for. But when one considers the 
enjoyment of the eyes, never let him settle 
on a flat. One should look down on the world. This 
I do. And this morning, Mr. Bonner ! and all ye 
who live in the crypts and passages of New York 
houses, how I pity you ! This morning is one of 
the mysterious and bewitching days. Surely it is not 
that the summer is ended, the green year passing, the 
winter coming, that gives such peculiar influence to 
the days. Something has been poured out into the 
air from the land of magic. It has been steeped with 
atmospheric wine, and we drink by breathing a sub- 
tile and exhilarating elixir. The blue is tender and 
pale. The skies are full of clouds, white, thin, and 
full of business. This one opening, shutting, melting, 
reforming, and so through all the changes ; this one 
making haste, as if called to some distant battle, and 
fiercely driving on in heat to the rendezvous ; or if 
milder thoughts prevail, then they seem like mighty 
flocks of fleecy birds, gathered from the summer 
hatching haunts of the north, and borne southward 
by the annual impulse of migration. But such is 
the depth, the beauty, and the mystic influence of 
the heavens, that to look up long into its cope affects 
you with giddiness, such as men feel who look down 
from great heights. And then, too, the color of all 
things is changing, — not changed, but only hinting 



856 EYES AND EAKS. 

color. We must except the maple-trees. Some of 
them are changed to a straw color. Yonder is one 
very green except one branch, which stretches up from 
the bottom nearly to the top, and that is of vivid 
scarlet. It looks like a tree with a great bouquet of 
flowers in its bosom. But along the fences are crim- 
son leaves ; the autumn yellows predominate. The 
corn is cut up, and stands out on the hills around 
here in shocks to dry. The emerald grass was never 
more tender in its green. The orchard is waiting to 
be relieved of its burden. All summer long it has 
eased itself by throwing down a part of its fruits, 
worm-picked or storm-gathered ; and now those ap- 
ples that remain, full grown, plump, ripe, look wist- 
fully at you, as if asking your care for winter. And 
the birds, — how they do behave ! What is the matter 
with them ? No one of them frolics. They have lost 
all their gamesome ways. They collect in mown 
field for seeds, they hover about orchards, exchanging 
remarks among themselves in low tones, like well- 
bred people, but none of them boisterous, frisky, or 
songful. Bluebirds, robins, and such sorts, abound ; 
sometimes scores flock about, then trios and fours. 
It is plain that they are done with summer. They 
have no nests now. Their children are all grown up. 
The birds all belong to the old folks' party. 

I wandered out this morning u.nder the trees (the 
good lady had gone to the village, and her daughter 
too, and I was quite free, and was shirking all work, 
and having a good time on the grass). Tliat, you 
know, is a good way to write an article. It is bad to 
go out and look at things if you wish to write about 
them. You must let them look at you. You must 



OUR HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 357 

show yourself to nature ; walk about confidentially 
and lovingly ; gaze at just those things that have 
magnetism in them, or sympathy, or influence, or 
whatever you choose to call it. Then, after an hour 
or two, if you wish to write, go to your desk, and 
whatever has had a reojl hold upon you will then 
come vividly up like pictures, — just as it does to me, 
now ; and I should give you a sparkling, glorious 
article now, were it not that at this very nick of time 
I am interrupted by the word, that if I send in time 
for this week, I must send this minute. 0, what you 
have lost ! It was very fine, — very, — the thing I 
was about to do ! 



OUR HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 




EN are naturally either proud or conceited, 
and sometimes both. This appears in many 
things, but in nothing more than in the su- 
percilious airs in which they indulge about 
housekeeping. Every well-bred woman has had occa- 
sion to lament the ignorance in which men live, with- 
out shame or self-reproach, of the commonest ele- 
ments of domestic economy. How often does the 
skilful wife lecture the discontented husband about 
the impossibility of getting a breakfast in ten minutes, 
or of always having things up to an imaginary perfec- 
tion ; or of doing as well on washing-days, or when 
the cook -is sick, or has broken her temperance pledge, 
or when there has been an insurrection among the 
help. Only the constant reminders of the excellent 



858 EYES AND EARS. 

women at the head of the bureau of domestic affairs 
can keep men from presumptuous remarks and igno- 
rant complaints. It would be well if men could some- 
times be left to do their own work. We have an ex- 
perience to relate. 

Our summer vacation was ended, but the family 
were to remain in the country until the frost opened 
chestnut-burrs and nipped the boys' fingers. We con- 
cluded to board ourselves for the day or two. It was 
Saturday. We began to reflect upon the stores to be 
laid in for Sunday, and the method of preparing 
them. We have a little gas-stove, invaluable for sick- 
ness, for pet suppers, and for returned gentlemen dis- 
posed to make their own tea. With it we could boil 
and bake. To broil was beyond its skill — or, at any 
rate, beyond our knowledge of its capacity. We rum- 
maged the shops and alighted upon a gas-broiler, to 
be described hereafter. 

We proceeded next to our grocer's, ordered six can- 
taloupes, as many tomatoes, and bread. On reach- 
ing home, it occurred to us that butter was sometimes 
used with bread, and that had been forgotten. We 
went back for it, and also procured half a dozen eggs. 
On reflecting how the eggs were to be eaten, pepper 
and salt came to mind, and not a particle of either 
could we find in the well-cleaned castor. We looked 
into the store closet, behind all the bottles, tore a little 
hole in every paper package, found sage, summer- 
savory, catnip, empty spice-boxes, salt-bags used for 
corks, and nests of boxes of all sizes, some with a 
smell of allspice, some with odor of cinnamon, and 
others fragrant of nutmegs, ginger, and cloves; but no 
salt, — pepper likewise. After wasting time in order 



OUR HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 859 

to save it, back we go a third time to the grocer for 
salt and pepper. A few crackers, also, and a few her- 
rings. 

Next, we reflected upon the proper elements of a 
solitary gentleman's dinner. Soup was out of the 
question ; roast, boiled, and fricassee were rejected ; 
fowls and fish were marked out ; and only porter- 
house steak and mutton-chop remain. The quantity 
staggered us a little. But, to err on the side opposite 
famine, we ordered two beefsteaks and five pounds of 
mutton-chop. (Let the sequel be noted.) As there 
was nobody in the house to receive them, we raced 
home to 'tend the door ! We waited a full hour, and 
when at length the things came in, our patience had 
gone out. 

Next, we found that coffee must be bought, then 
tea (English breakfast tea, of course, real Souchong, 
— the only tea of thorough refinement, green teas 
being for unlearned drinkers). These we brought 
home in our own hands. At length our labors of 
preparation seemed over, and we began to contem- 
plate results, — when it flashed upon us that there 
was neither milk nor sugar in the house ! These 
caused another journey. We hunted up a kitchen 
knife and fork, for every available instrument had 
been carried away, and the silver was all locked up in 
somebody's safe. Thus nothing was. left for burglars, 
and — nothing for us. In this round of investigation 
we gained an acquaintance with our own house which 
forty years of common life would not bestow. We 
found out all about the sideboard, its spoon-drawer, 
its napkin-drawer, its closet, and that secret drawer 
oji each side, so cunningly arranged that no thief 



860 EYES AND EARS. 

would ever suspect its presence until he found it out. 
Then the china-closet was a perfect novelty, and held 
us in long investigation. We climbed to the top 
shelves of the store-closet, saw fragments of dishes, — 
various old acquaintances that disappeared long time 
ago. We searched the hall-closet, and the kitchen- 
closet, the closets between the two rooms, full of 
drawers ; we got down on our knees to look into 
lower closets tucked in under suites of drawers, and 
we mounted up on barrels to peer into high nooks 
and shelves, and, in one case, the barrel playing us 
a mean trick, we came down both sooner and faster 
than we had intended. 

But how shall we describe our experiences when all 
these preparations resulted in an actual meal ? A 
long flexible tube was brought from the central gas- 
fixture, and connected with the pet- stove. To boil 
the water for tea or coffee was easy. We had often 
done that. But we had forgotten just how much tea 
should be put in for a drawing. And the quantity 
was certainly enough. We diluted and diluted, and 
were prodigal of milk and sugar, without being able 
to cover the prodigious bitterness of the draught. 
We note that the two principal faults of tea-making 
were too much tea and too long steeping. It took us 
yet longer to drink it, and longer yet to get over it, 
and into sleep. ♦ 

But this was all commonplace compared with our 
meat history. The broiler was very much like two 
iron pot-lids soldered together, with a hollow handle 
attached. The gas came through the handle into the 
space between, and the lower section being perforated 
with a multitude of gas-holes, when gas was let on 



OUK HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 361 

the lower surface was covered with blue jets. The 
meat being placed on a tin dish, this blazing cover was 
placed on proper supports just over it, and shot its 
heat downwards. It is a capital contrivance. The 
juice, the odor, and the fragrant fumes, attempting to 
escape, were driven back into the meat, and in my 
own case, such was the force of repression, that they 
were driven out of the plate and over on to the dining- 
room carpet (for all our exploits took place there). 
Just as the meat began to sizzle and sputter, and while 
w^e were delightedly gazing at the process, the tube 
slipped off the handle, the flame went out very sud- 
denly over the meat, but not till the escaping gas from 
the liberated tube had caught fire and shot a flame 
across our hands, that caused us to drop broiler, knife, 
and everything else, with astonishing celerity. We 
had no idea before how spry we could be. The evil 
was soon repaired, but only to play off again the same 
trick, till we held the tube on to the broiler with one 
hand, and manipulated the meat with the other. We 
salted it, we peppered it, we turned it twice, the first 
time on to the floor, the next time on to the dish, but 
with the same side up. The fork was a four-pronger. 
It could not get hold, or only just so far as was need- 
ful to effect a deception and a disaster. At length we 
put out the gas, uncovered the meat, took both hands, 
and triumphantly reversed the obdurate steak. 

It was with some pleasure, but not much pride, 
that we sat down, at length, to the repast. The bread 
was baker's. Of course it was dry, tough, and taste- 
less. The tea we have spoken of. The meat was the 
grand dependence. It was serviceable. We could 
hardly cut it, and could not chew it. The tomatoes 

16 



362 EYES AND EARS. 

were good. The melons were not. But the whole 
dinner agreed with our theory of moderation in appe- 
tite, and the satisfaction which we lacked in eating we 
sought to gain by profitable meditations. 

Facilis descensus Averno ; sed revocare gradum^ 
&c., — "It is easy to get dinner, but to wash up the 
things, this is the burden and toil ! " Yirgil never 
spoke a truer word. 

The water was hot. We found it out the moment 
we put our hand in the dish. It was the same hand 
that the gas had flamed on. We reflected on the dif- 
ference between dry heat and moist hotness. 

We could find no dish-cloth. The grease would not 
come off the plates. There was no soap. We rubbed 
with our hand, which only gave the grease a circular 
form on the plates. At length we got a newspaper, 
and by vigorous rubbing, got the ware into a present- 
able condition. The tea-cups were better served. We 
found a napkin on the bottom of the spoon-drawer. 
It was a mercy ! 

There was no swill-bucket, and nowhere to throw 
the slops, and nobody that came for these superflui- 
ties in summer. The melon-rinds, the tomato frag- 
ments, the inexorable meat scraps, and the unmen- 
tionable sundries of a man's cooking were heaped into 
the dish-pan. There they stood. Another newspa- 
per served to rub down the table. It was our last sol- 
itary meal. A week afterwards the fragments were 
found standing on the table where we had left them ; 
the lamb-chops we had left and forgotten in the cup- 
board, and they had a way of making their presence 
and exigencies known. Indeed, our whole procedure 
in this case met with the disapprobation of the powers 
^hat be, nor can we say that they exactly suited us. 



SOLITUDE: WASPS 363 

But we have, now, a profound sense of a man's 
dependence on women for domestic comfort. Instead 
of thinking that housekeeping is easy, — a mere noth- 
ing, we admire and revere the genius that conducts 
so intricate a campaign as must be every single day's 
housekeepmg. 




SOLITUDE; WASPS. 

[|UCH company prepares us to enjoy solitude, 
and being alone fits us again for society. 
There is a longing for rest which grows 
upon us in the throng, not merely from 
fatigue, but from a subtile action of pride and self- 
respect. In society men are like threads, woven in 
and out, and composing a fabric of many colors. 
They tend to lose their personal distinctness. One 
wishes to separate himself from all influences about 
him, and see just what is left of himself. Our life 
runs hither and thither as the Croton water follows 
the plumber's pipes. It is no longer a river flowing 
at its own will, between its own banks, with its own 
pools and shallows, windings and shoots, depths and 
breadths. We escape from multitudes with a sense 
of intense gladness. 

The quiet, the unquestioning silence, the absence 
of watching eyes, the subsidence of vigilance, guard, 
and circumspection, on our own part, the gentle rise 
of liberty in all things, the release of the nerves, the 
unvexed placidity of the disposition, — these are the 
first-fruits of solitude. 



364 EYES AND EAES. 

Now, if one lias sought rest in the country, he 
will be consmous of the distinct luxury of sounds in 
distinction from noise. Tlie city is a vast mill. It 
crashes, jars, rattles, grinds. The houses shake. 
There is not an hour of the day, and scarcely one 
of the night, in which your nerves do not quiver to 
the heavy roll of burdened vehicles. At a little dis- 
tance the sound of the city is like the roar of surf 
on an exposed seashore. All individuality of sounds 
is merged in the great battle of noises which fill the 
air and shake the ground^ After an hour's dash 
upon the express, we land forty miles away. Soon 
we are walking a silent path along the hill-side. A 
few crickets chirp. A chipmonk half whistles, half 
barks, as he dives into the chinks of the stone-wall. 
It is an upland path along which you walk, stopping 
often, gazhig now at the great cloud-fleets that voy- 
age through the sky without pilots or crew, forever 
sailing, but never accomplisliing their voyage ; now 
at the hills, scarped and moulded to every form and 
with every variation of line. The Hudson lies like 
a lake before you. It is a charmed world ! Your 
cares forget you. A soft sadness mellows every feel- 
ing. Out of sadness, if it be a right one, grow the 
sweetest flowers of gladness. You take hold of God's 
thoughts in nature, and are sure that his realm is 
wider than the human kind. 

Man is master. But there is a great deal in this 
world besides man. Nature takes a thousand dar- 
lings to her bosom. Every evening motherly dark- 
ness puts to bed myriads of unnamed children of the 
sod, of the leaf, of tree, bush, moss, and stone. Ev- 
ery morning she sends again to awaken her brood, 



SOLITUDE : WASPS. 365 

and troops them forth to their dewy breakfast. " The 
eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them 
their meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand 
and satisfiest the desires of every living thing." We 
sometimes get nearer to God in proportion as we get 
far from men. These neglected treasures of Nature 
are a book of Divine things, and if we do not read, 
the Creator does. 

* * * * • » 

The wasp is always well dressed, and always ready 
for company. A nimble creature, exquisite in every 
particular, — trig, polished, burnished, elegant in form, 
— what single thing can be alleged against him ex- 
cept that little stiletto which he carries in a terminal 
sheath ? Yet he is not to be blamed. He did not 
put it there. All that in reason can be required is, 
that he use his concealed weapons in a manner con- 
formable to justice and good morals. And this I 
believe he always aims to do. At any rate, if men 
would use their tono^ues with half that discretion 
which belongs to the walk and conduct of wasps, 
the world would gain at a great rate. 

If anybody has reason to avenge himself upon 
them, I am he. When October days come, and sad 
thoughts invade the bosoms of wasps, they gather 
themselves around the house and barn, on sunny 
days, to make ready for winter. 

Now, for a gentleman at leisure walking up and 
down, soliloquizing good-will to all creation, it is 
a very awkward thing to have a wasp creeping up 
between his boot and pantaloon, and he be ignorant 
of the fact ! 

The poor insect is unconscious of any impropriety. 



S66 EYES AND EARS. 

He has no suspicion of the scenes which you will 
soon enact. It is not until he has ascended above 
your knee that some motion constraining the cloth 
presses him close to your warm flesh. The contact 
is a terror to him. It may be the bosom of a devour- 
ing enemy ! Like a hero, he will die fighting. He 
thrusts out his sword in a manner that dispels every 
poetic dream, and brings you to the realities of life 
with such a clutch at the spot as no man can give 
except one who has once had a wasp between rai- 
ment and body. You have got him ! To do it you 
have taken a large grasp, that he may be encompassed 
with thicknesses of cloth impervious to the longest 
sting. But the act and attitude are not favorable to 
grace. You rush toward the house or barn, careless 
of pace or dignity, and eager only for deliverance. 
Now, unless one has been drilled, it is difficult to dis- 
robe while you are bent half double, and with only a 
left hand at liberty for use and an enemy in the rear. 
As the cautious work goes on, some luckless fold 
loosens, and the enemy is at you again, this time 
in good earnest. Strange that so small an instru- 
ment can put a brave man into such ecstatic haste. 
But there is many a man who could firmly face a 
cannon, who could not stand for a moment with 
a wasp under his garment! 

The fact is, you do not know where he is — or will 
be. He may be in your hand, or he may be just 
in the act of lancing you, here or there or anywhere. 
And the expectation is dreadful. We know that it 
is. An enemy in the dark is always powerful through 
fear. 

1 consider one wasp under our dress as more ter- 



SOLITUDE : WASPS. 367 

rible than nine hundred and ninety-nine in a fair 
fight in the open field ! « 

Bad as this scene is to a proud nature with delicate 
susceptibilities, there is a disgrace even worse ; for, 
within a few days, and while your flesh creeps with 
the remembrance, you are walking your garden with 
a few friends, picking flowers for one and another 
in turn, and nourishing the hours with genial con- 
verse, when in the very middle of a sentence you 
seize yourself with a desperate clutch, and without 
word or bow you race and hobble toward the house 
again. You have but one single comfort, — that you 
are not stung yet. With utter expedition, you come 
down to the root of the difficulty, and find that there 
was no wasp at all, only a leaf tickling your skin ! 
In fact, you are angry now to think there was no 
wasp. If one must go through the fear, the march, 
the fumble, the search, he ought at least to be re- 
warded with a wasp ! 

Now, whatever may have been the sentiment, the 
tenderness, the sobriety of the former hour, such an 
e.':perience tends to dissipate it; and so. Friend Bon- 
ner, the mere writing about it has so put to flight all 
my pretty fancies and conceits about solitude, that I 
think it best to reserve them for a time when solitude 
shall not be so sweetened. 



368 EYES AND EAES. 




FOOD DISCOYERIES. 

ID it ever enter your mind to inquire how 
certain articles of diet were first intro- 
duced ? Much speculation has been in- 
dulged in respecting the origin of lan- 
guage : how men began ; whether the first parents 
were born already talking, language being a part of 
the machine, just as striking is of the clock ; or 
whether they first began by interjections and grunts, 
which in time worked out into words and syllables, 
until in time language grew. Such researches are 
very profitable, without doubt. 

But will it be any less so to inquire into the steps 
by which the first eaters advanced, the progress of 
discovery and the eras of invention ? It takes no deal 
of practice to set a child in the line of eating, now 
that everything is in working order. But how about 
the first men ? Did they go about tasting everything 
that they saw ? or were they instructed ? There 
seems to be no positive evidence that they were, and 
analogies are against it. I can imagine Eve experi- 
menting upon peaches, whose color invites, whose 
flavor provokes, a further trial. Strawberries and 
grapes, — how could a hungry soul do less, having 
smelled of them, than taste? But chestnuts, cocoa- 
nuts, and many other things, must have had a his- 
tory. A chestnut-burr does not reward the handluig 
at first. Perhaps these do not grow in regions first 
populated, or frosts may have had the first handling 
of the burr, and opened the silk nest in which the nuts 



FOOD DISCOVERIES. 369 

had lodged, and then some wind served a writ of 
ejectment on them. Then the all-devouring, pig 
might have experimented upon them. Or squirrels 
may have been pioneers, and men, observing the 
satisfaction manifested by their inferiors, may have 
concluded tliat it was worth their trial. 

But the difficulties do not chiefly lie in the direc- 
tion of nuts and flavorsome fruits. When was the 
transition made from cereals and fruits, from roots 
and leaves, .to flesh? That must have marked 
an era. 

Is it Charles Lamb that gives the account of the 
first roast pig? He has not> mentioned, if I recollect 
aright, the authorities consulted, though his known 
sobriety of judgment and carefulness of statement 
lead us to conclude that he had satisfactory data for 
the statements made. But his theory or history does 
not seem to indicate so much the origin of a general 
use of flesh, as a local and special taste which sprung 
up for pig. When did men begin to slay cattle ? to 
dare to eat meat red with its blood ? When did they 
discover that water contained food ? Was it not a 
bold man that first ate fish ? But when we come to 
crabs and lobsters, the case becomes wonderful ! Can 
anything be more abhorrent to Mie first impressions 
than those sprawling, many-legged, hideous-eyed, nim- 
ble, flat dragons of the deep ? Suppose a storm to 
have thrown one upon the shore. How dared a man 
to touch it ? He must have been drunk and reckless. 
But an oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concen- 
tration of sapid excellence, that mouthful before all 
other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and 
courage to execute ! The exterior is not persuasive. 

16* X 



370 EYES AND EARS. 

One would be as likely to gather stones for a lun- 
cheon, as the oyster, shut fast in his shell. Inaagine 
one opened. The long shell contains this armless, 
legless, eyeless pulp, without skin, hair, or bone, with- 
out motion or sense. What does it most resemble ? 
Every one will liave his own imagination. But each 
one of them, we dare to say, will be something repul- 
sive to taste. Even to this hour, the first acquaint- 
ance with oysters is with much hesitation and squeam- 
ish apprehension. Who, then, first gulped the dainty 
thing, and forever after called himself blessed ? I 
have my own theory. 

Some adventurous sailors, probably, were driven 
ashore, their boat swamped, all their provisions sunl^, 
and half their company drowned. Unable to find 
root or acorn on the barren shore, afraid ta venture 
back into the country, where, perhaps, they might 
have been served up for food themselves, they sat 
upon the beach, disconsolate. Some dry sticks, which 
the waves cast up, lay near them. By rubbing they 
kindled a spark, and built a fire upon the sand and 
stones. They saw oysters lying about, cast up by the 
violent waves which had been so disastrous to them. 
Some lay uiiderneath the wood, some at the edge of 
the coals. Tlie oy^er, surprised at such a warm 
reception, opened his mouth, and could not shut it ! 
From that moment the world was richer. The hun- 
gry men believed the benignant gods had wrought a 
miracle for their salvation. The morsel looked un- 
savory. But if the divinities had wrought food out 
of stones, what were they, that they should be afraid 
to eat ? No sooner had they tasted than they were 
confirmed in their superstition. This was the very 



FOOD. DISCOVERIES. 371 

food of the gods. A portion had been dropped down 
for them ! 

But, now that men have learned to eat such unin- 
viting, and even repulsive things, why should they, 
with ill-timed prejudice, turn away from other morsels 
and delicacies ? Why is not a rat as good as a rab- 
bit ? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cock- 
roaches ? In other words, why eat the white shrimps 
and reject tlie black ones ? Why, in short, should 
not every plump and well-conditioned insect be 
turned to good account, some for stews, some* for 
soups, and some for garnishes ? A boiled ham, orna- 
mented no longer with useless cloves, but with grass- 
hoppers and roaches ! Vermicular soups, as well as 
Vermicelli ? The French eat snails, and have snail- 
eries. Saint John lived on locusts. Spiders taste 
like walnuts. There are stores of luxuries yet in re- 
serve. Instead of taxing our wits to find how to 
exterminate the insect creation that invade our dwell- 
ings, prey upon our harvests, and mar our fruit, let 
us exchange our tastes, lay aside our prejudices, and 
attack them with our palate. Once let it be put in 
full activity, and there is nothing can stand before the 
human mouth. French savans are attempting to in- 
troduce horse-flesh to the tables which long have flour- 
ished beef. Why not next invade the long-neglected 
list of delicacies, hitherto despised as luxuries, and 
made to live a useless life, or even a mischievous 
one ? 



372 EYES AND EARS. 



GOOD-NATURED PEOPLE. 




R. BONNER: It is a great pleasure to 
write a paper upon good-nature^ to a good- 
natured man, just as it is fit to speak of 
justice before a just judge, or of art before 
a refined person. Are you not good-natured ? Then 
the handwriting on the face is not spelled rightly. 
The, form, too, and all the personal circumstances, 
agree ! There is something in breadth of body and 
largeness of countenance that always suggests gen- 
erous and good-natured disposition. Good-nature 
seems to require some space on which to unroll. 
Lines and angles are for wit. A smooth brow and 
corrugated cheek indicate thought. This matter of 
the cheek, however, is purely stomachic, and not 
cerebral. A sunken cheek and thin face under a 
large brow show that the brain cheats the stomach 
of good digestion. 

Good-nature is, for the most part, among the young 
a matter of temperament. Bilious temperaments are 
not apt to be cheerful. They are grave and stern, or 
sad. Nervous temperaments are not equable. They 
are excessively happy or intensely unhappy. They 
are quick for joy, and as quick for sorrow. A man 
of nervous temperament, in good health, in prosper- 
ous condition, in peaceful circumstances, may be 
cheerful and good-natured. But excitements and 
disappointments go hard with him. There are some 
men whose nerves seem not to have been covered 
up. They lie out to the weather. 



GOOD-NATURED PEOPLE. 373 

But phlegmatic persons are good-natured from a 
want of sensibility. They are not affected by troubles, 
because they live under bomb-proof roofs. 

The sanguine temperament affords the genuine 
good-natured disposition. Here it is natural. Ev- 
erything conspires to produce cheerfulness, hopeful- 
ness, and ardor of sentiment. 

But while good-nature in youth is largely a mat- 
ter of nice organization, it becomes in age a result 
of will and of habit. Many men are drilled to it 
by their experience ; some come to it by the force 
of religious motives ; and some because, in the decay 
of forces, many of the unruly or discordant elements 
of th^ir nature are weakened and subordinated. 

But, however it may come, or upon whatever terms 
it may exist, how blessed are good-natured people ! 
They only, of almost all mankind, have invariable 
good luck. They convert trouble into amusement. 
Or they meet it with such cheer that its power is 
broken. 

Good-nature disarms enmity, allays irritation, stops 
even the garrulity of fault-finding. It more than 
half overcomes envy. A real good-natured man is 
the most troublesome morsel that the malign pas- 
sions ever attempt to feed upon. He is the natural 
superior of irritable persons. He that can govern 
himself can control others. An irritable man, whom 
any one can excite, is like a horse kept at livery, 
ridden by every one, and spurred by each rider. 
Nobody is so little his own master as he who can be 
stirred and provoked at another's will. Anybody 
can eject him from his castle. 

There is high eulogy pronounced in Sacred Writ 



874 EYES AND EARS. 

Upon good-natured men, for such I take to be the 
meaning of the passage in Proverbs, *' He that is 
shio to anger is better than the niig-htf/, and he that 
ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a cil/ij.^^ It is 
liarder to keep your temper tlian to take a city ! It 
shows more skill, foresight, courage, and good engi- 
neering, esi)ecially in their cases who are naturally 
irritable. They have to provide beforehand, to make 
battle against subtle enemies, and often under des- 
perate conditions. But it is worth all it costs. 

Ought there not to be associations for the promo- 
tion of g-ood-nature ? Ought not premiums and tes- 
timonials to bo given ? No branch of education 
stands more in need of culture. None will be at 
once so much of utility and accomi)lishment to- 
gether ! And if some movement can be made, will 
'tjou consent to preside at some meeting for such a 
])uri)ose? In the earlier meeting none but men of 
known good-nature should be called together. Atra- 
bilious reformers would ruin us. No man who can- 
not keep a smile on his face as long as the dew rests 
on clover in a cloudy summer morning ought to be 
intrusted with making the constitution and by-laws. 
After we have secured a proper organization thus, 
we might admit others to our good-natured influ- 
ences. Something ought to be done. 

There are a great many cross men about now-a- 
days. People are fault-finding. Indeed, I have been 
grumbled at myself. Can anything more be needed 
to show the need of reformatory measures ? 




STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM. 375 



STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM. 

OW sweet is the air ! It is full of moisture, 
smell of new leaves and earth-odor. The 
sky does not scowl ! Neither does it smile. 
It has a grave and reverend aspect. And 
yet clouds are frolicking like kittens, running in and 
out, whisking and scuddhig as if sent forth on pur- 
pose to play. There is a deal of waggery in a s|)ring 
rain. It seems to enjoy the untimely spirts which it 
makes upon men and beasts. To catch a man under 
an umbrella, — to push him hither and tliither, to 
swing sheets of rain underneath his protection, and 
fnially to turn his umbrella inside out, wrest it from 
his hands, and then to pelt down upon him in un- 
measured generosity, appear to give a spring rain tlie 
utmost satisfaction.^ Another trick is peculiarly pleas- 
ing to the moist divinities that spy and play in the 
clouds. 

A wagon full of unprotected people, seeing the 
shower, make desperate speed toward a shed or shel- 
ter. A race is fairly set. The rain scuds after them, 
but holds off until they are within a few rods, then 
down comes the torrent, and wets them as thoroughly 
as if they had travelled at their leisure, instead of 
blowing their horse with tantalizing speed. So, too, a 
weather-wise eye scans the clouds from the place of 
refuge where he has lurked snug and dry, and de- 
clares the rain over, — ventures forth, and gets well 
on to the road, when, whish ! dash ! the cunning show- 
er pours all over him ! Water will put out fire. But 



876 EYES AND EARS. 

it lias kindled temper a good many times, or made it 
burn the fiercer when already kindled. And yet how 
inexpressibly balmy, and how full of mysterious influ- 
ences is one of these changing, multitudinous days in 
early summer ! 

Well, you will ask me, " What of all that ? " Why, 
til at I have been up to Peekskill ; that the hills are all 
clothed in green ; that birds have improved since last 
summer, and can sing at least one note higher on the 
scale ; that frogs are practising on one string in all 
the solitary pools ; that squirrels are wide awake, and 
crows as solemn as ever. The moss on the stone-wall 
has been well kept through the winter, grass is almost 
fit for the scythe, daisies are winking at you all over 
the mowing-lot, wrens are gibbering, hens cackling, 
ducks waddling, calves frisking, as if all the world 
were at peace. Little seeds are sending up little 
stems ; and little stems are rocking little baby-buds, 
which in a few weeks will open forth into beauty. 
The crops are giving glorious promise. There are 
my strawberries! — ah, sir, it would do your benevo- 
lent heart good just to look at the generosity of these 
plants ! The leaves ! — how large, what healthy green ! 
— how they hold themselves, like a roof, over the 
young berries ! Every day the hens go up and ex- 
plore the chances. But they shall not have any ! 
They shall all be shut up ! 

And this harvest of strawberries, — what visions of 
bliss lie in the near future ! They shall be picked 
in great, cool dishes, before the sun rises, with dew 
fresh on their blushing cheeks ! They shall be pulled 
by delicate fingers ; heaped up in saucers forever too 
small, — great berries, — each one a mouthful, — some 



STRAWBEEKIES AND CREAM. 877 

to be eaten just as they are, while the red multitude 
are to be overpoured with cream. Cream ! what is 
that ? A pasture, knee-deep with clover, with blue- 
grass, with orcliard grass, and red-top ; spring water 
gushing cool close by ; a pail, large, scoured white, 
and brimming full with milk crowned with foam ; 
pans, bright as silver, in a cool, sweet cellar, through 
which the air circulates, carrying off every gas or 
odor ; and then, after twelve hours, do not be too 
particular, but take that which comes first on the 
pan, — not too long kept and clotted, not too soon 
skimmed and thin, but cream that is neither young 
nor old, but a term midway between both, — take 
this, inquisitive reader ! and let your hand be lib- 
eral toward the saucer-full of Jenny Lind, Triumph 
de Gand, Bartlett's Seedling, or Lanier's Madison, 
and then, with sweet bread and butter, and your 
friends around you, eat, and pity the gods that sit 
above the clouds where they can't have cows or 
strawberries ! 

But let not those despair who have no cream. Put 
ripe berries in a dish, add a little cold water, break 
them down with a spoon (a silver spoon will do) to 
a jelly, adding just enough water and sugar to make 
them half liquid, and you shall find many another 
dish less delicious than strawberries and water ! But 
who can depict the comfits, the strawberry tarts, the 
pies, the puddings, jams, and preserves which they 
form ? And yet, preserved strawberries are but a 
mockery. The flavor, the spirit, the aroma, cannot 
be kept by fire or sugar. The strawberry was born 
to bless us in its lifetime. Its posthumous honors 
are, like those of many others, but dim and fugitive 
memories of something that was, but is not. 



378 EYES AND EARS. 

And now, having suitably opened this subject, I am 
prepared to say, that I defy you to a trial of endur- 
ance and capacity in a strawberry-feast. You shall 
not return without a strong battle. We will so fill 
you, pelt you, stain you with strawberries that for a 
month thereafter you shall imagine yourself to be a 
round, red, juicy, fragrant strawberry ! 

P. S. — Do not publish this. I have no objection 
to its going into the Ledger in a confidential way. 
But it is a family matter addressed principally to your 
eyes. 



THE LIFE OF FLOWERS. 




r is conceded now, by vegetable physiolo- 
gists, that plants have a real life, — not by 
a figure of speech, not a slight analogy of 
'^ life, but a real vegetable life, which con- 
nects them with the long chain of more perfectly de- 
veloped life above them. This it is a great comfort to 
know. Life without passions ! Life without selfish- 
ness, envyings, jealousy, supplantings, or hatred I It 
may to some seem a little tame to have such an in- 
competent life. And, without a doubt, it would be a 
poor substitute for the higher animal life. But, with 
it, and as one department in the great realm of 
organic life, it is intensely interesting to see a devel- 
opment, if not of beings, yet of living agents, without 
wills, affections, or passions, producing such a round 
of magnificent effects as is found in the vegetable 
kingdom. 



THE LIFE OF FLOWERS. 379 

But to a sensitive imagination, the belief of this 
life-principle works increased tenderness toward flow- 
ers. They are now relatives, — if not country cous- 
ins, yet remote kindred. We plant them with some 
sense of the dignity of seeds ! We nurse and tend 
them as if they were infant children. We begin to 
transfer to them the experience of human life. They 
must eat. They must drink. They must perspire. 
They must be kept clean. They must sleep, breathe, 
excrete, and, in short, perform all functions of supply, 
repair, and development. 

But may we not imagine, now, that as there is a 
vegetable life so there is a vegetable soul, which bears 
to our higher human soul about the same relation 
that the vegetable life-principle does to the animal 
life-principle ? 

Is it so difficult to imagine (for we suggest it as a 
mere fancy) that flowers represent different disposi- 
tions ? In human experience disposition springs from 
affections or sentiments. But flowers do not think or 
feel. Beauty seems the end of their life. Their 
souls, if they have any, must be regarded as a modi- 
fication of this element of beauty. And as, when 
we speak of a person's disposition we think of con- 
scious and voluntary feeling, so, when we speak of a 
flower's disposition, we should think of some ten- 
dency or active reaching toward beauty, in some of 
its innumerable combinations. 

What the range of such a life is, it is impossible for 
one to conceive. It must not be measured by our 
estimate of beauty, nor by analogies with our sort of 
life. Men are supreme egotists. They regard noth- 
ing as of value that does not in some way measure 



880 EYES AND EARS. 

itself by them. But beauty has relatively but a small 
function in human life. It would seem to play a 
higher part in the economy of the universe. If the 
profusion of things beautiful, the varieties of beauty, 
the creation of beauty outside of all human recogni- 
tion, — as in shells under the wave, in fisll, in insects 
that live in wood or earth, in tropical life, where the 
most gorgeous displays are least witnessed, in hyper- 
borean beauty, in crystalline snow-forms and frost- 
etchings, — be considered, it is plain that beauty is 
developed in this world on account of the taste, or 
want, or love, of the organizing and creating mind, 
rather than for the immediate necessity or use of the 
human race. Thus, a civilized man, living among 
Indians, might sit for years, occupying his leisure in 
writing his meditations and observations, and pouring 
out the elements of a noble life, without its having 
relation to the consciousness or occupation of those 
among whom he outwardly dwelt. So God may be 
pouring out a noble life, written in elements of beauty, 
beneath, above, around, and within human life, and 
yet, in so far as we are concerned, little or not at all 
recognized. 

In such a view, flowers may be said to live to God 
more than to men. And if they are effecting a divine 
mission, and having a relation to the Divine mind, they 
may have more of a soul-life than we think or dream 
of. Judged by our standard, birds have very poor 
language. But is the human idea of language the fit 
one by which to measure bird-language ? Is there 
no listening except through our ears ? Is there no 
back-realm, no invisible sphere through which musical 
sounds move and beauty gleams, more freely, easily, 



THE LIFE OF FLOWERS. ♦ 381 

and copiously than through the opaque elements of 
human life ? And precisely the same thought applies 
to form, color, and odor in flower-life. 

How easily, then, may we imagine that flowers are 
set to develop, in this world, another and entirely 
different experiment of life, having its peculiar ele- 
ments, its relations, more directly with God and spir- 
its than with men, and discovered to men only so far 
as our gross senses can recognize them. Flowers, as 
such, can present themselves to only two doors of the 
mind, — to sight and smell. The ear has nothing to 
do with them. Touch and taste are related to them 
in no way that discriminates them from everything 
else. The eye and the nose at once, and they only, 
recognize the flower as differing from other objects. 

In short, these most exquisite organizations, that 
have so very slight a hold on human life, have been 
created and spread, with a Divine care and wisdom, 
in such profusion, and are so full of creative thought 
and taste, as to compel us to infer that they answer 
a purpose quite beyond the ordinary ideas of men. 
Other beings are being ministered to besides men. 
As our eye glances over a meadow purpled with June, 
it does not follow that all this gorgeous life rises and 
expends itself for us, alone or chiefly, or that there is 
no more life in it than so much as our coarse senses 
perceive. Flowers have a life that ministers chiefly 
in another direction. They are sent to do God's 
tvork in unrevealed paths, and to diffuse influence by 
channels that we hardly suspect. A lighthouse upon 
a promontory jutting far out into the sea, cannot tell 
Its keeper what it has been doing all night. While 
he slept, it burned on. It flashed its beams far out 



382 ^ EYES AND EARS. 

along the beaded crests of waves, and fell upon the 
eye of the watcher, — on an Indiaman, returned from 
months of sailing out of sight of land, — to tell him 
where he was, and how near to his port. It clieered 
some storm-tossed mariner that had lost his reckon- 
ing, and at its flash first knew, for many days, where 
he was. It warned many a sail, that then stood off 
from perilous shoals. It confirmed and cheered many 
a navigator, who, as it sent its beams forth to him, 
knew that his calculations were right. And so all 
night long, its long silent beams shot forth into the 
darkness, conveying mute lessons and tidings to a 
hundred ocean craft, and yet it kept no journal, and 
made no report of its doings ; and when, in the morn- 
ing, the keeper arose to trim his dying lamps, he 
knew nothing of all the mysterious signallings that 
had been going on, — messages of life and death, sent 
on beams of light through the darkness, to passers-by 
on the far-off sea. 

Has God no lights and signals? Has the unkindled 
glow of Beauty no relation to those that pass by us 
through the invisible realm ? Do we that look upon 
the kindled flowers, imagine what they have done, or 
are doing, to eyes that watch from afar? Because 
their life is not one fitted to commune with us, have 
they no life and communion the other way ? 

Flowers may beckon toward us, but they speak 
toward heaven and God ! 



CHILDHOOD AND DISENCHANTMENT. 388 



CHILDHOOD AND DISENCHANTMENT. 




"|HE progress of disenchantment marks the 
advance and declme of age. Our youth 
occupies itself unconsciously in surrounding 
all things with the hues and proportions of 
the imagmation. Mountains will never again be so 
large as in childhood, nor roads so long, nor stones so 
heavy, nor colors so bright, nor distances so limitless. 
When the ripe man, after years of absence, revisits 
the scenes of childhood, he is disappointed and sur- 
prised. Is it possible that this little stone, which was 
a landmark in our games, ever seemed so vast as 
it did? 

Is this the river — this thread of silver water — 
from whose edge we used to look fearingly into the 
current ? And those immense trees, in whose tops 
winter winds roared, and summer birds sang, can it 
be possible that they were so small as this ? Once we 
thought it a feat to throw a stone up to the middle 
branches ; now to jerk one over the top is a mere 
trifle. The well is not so deep as it was, the pas- 
ture is not so large, the road to Aunt Bull's not so 
long, nor. to the brook beyond where we watered the 
horse every day, nor to the orchard, nor to Mr. Bid- 
well's, nor clear round to the pond ! 

In like manner do our wonderful books and won- 
derful heroes diminish in interest and importance. 
Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress alone hold 
out, and are as engaging in later years as in earlier: 
But even that incomparable marvel and soul-stirring 



384 EYES AND EARS. 

repository of wonder, the Arabian Nights, has lost 
its wonderfiihiess. We read it with sadness to find 
that we are so little interested where once we were 
intoxicated with excitement. Meanwhile the witch 
stories, the children's tales, the Jack the Giant-Killer 
and his compeers, are gone forever. 

If we could array before our judgment now the 
(vits, the skilful men, the strong men, that excited our 
youthful admiration, it is very probable that we 
should turn them all off as worth scarcely a thought. 
It is said that the strong 7nan of the town could lift a 
barrel of cider and drink from the bung. We used 
to imagine what a time Samson would have had with 
such another giant ! And it is to be doubted whether 
Samson, with all his strength, ever lifted a barrel of 
cider and drank out of its bung. 

In these degenerate days of railroads, stage-coaches 
are no longer the important things they were in our 
childhood. When the horn sounded, far up the 
street, where the road comes into the -village, no mat- 
ter where we were, nor at what play, we ran and 
tumbled into the front-yard to see the wonder of each 
alternate day. There came the four horses, and the 
swinging, round-topped stage, — and that great man, 
the stage-driver ! 

If he had commanded us, we verily believe we 
should have raced and chased the town over, on his 
errands, enough compensated by being under the 
command of a man so wonderful. Not Solomon in 
all his glory was ever arrayed like one of these, or 
drove such horses, or had such supreme influence 
upon the children ! And then, to go down to the 
stage-yard, where Parks kept his horses ; to walk 



CHILDHOOD AND DISENCHANTMENT. 385 

reverently about the new, red, magnificent stage, to 
look in at the stable-door and see a long row of hind 
legs, and half as many long tails whisking around 
them, and to wonder what was outside of the door 
beyond, and take to our heels with desperate fear 
when the hostler, in imaginary anger, roared out, 
" Clear out, you rascals ! what are you doing here ? " 
— these experiences weighed on our after thoughts, 
and formed a part of our boyish conversations, and 
were of as much relative importance to us then as 
now revolutions and battles are. 

But there are some things that lose nothing, and 
gain much. Those yearning thoughts toward the In- 
finite and the Eternal, — those solemn and trembling 
moods of veneration in the presence of evident mani- 
festations of Divine Power, — those heart-lovings to- 
ward noble friends who were worthy of all that the soul 
could give them, — these suffer no declension and no 
diminution. Age deepens veneration and love. Our 
riper judgment approves the heart's experience, and 
adds new impressions. Thus, it would seem as if all 
experiences that are nearly related to the senses and 
tlie body wane as we grow old, while those that spring 
from the soul inherit something of its immortality, 
and neither fade with years, or fall away, but, like all 
the nobler faculties of the mind, grow brighter as 
they advance toward the gate at whose threshold all 
weakness ends, and perfectness begins. 



17 



386 EYES AND EARS. 



MY PICTURE-GALLERY. 




HA YE seen the principal galleries of pic- 
tures in American cities, and a few of the 
eminent collections in London and Paris. 
It may seem to some like vain and foolish 
boasting to say that I have a collection of pictures 
far surpassing any at home or abroad. Yet I con- 
scientiously affirm it. Of course, it would be tho 
vice of a curmudgeon to shut up such a collection. 
I keep it open through the day, and often far into 
night. No fee is charged for admission. Entrance 
is permitted at all times, even when a new arrange- 
ment of pictures is going on, — for I have so many 
pictures that all cannot be exhibited at once, and 
every day I make some fresh dispositions. Although 
figure-pieces largely outnumber all others, yet there 
are admirable sea-pieces, ships, bits of landscape, fine 
cloud effects, very well executed trees, fruit-pieces, 
animals of many kinds, true to life. Great pains 
has been taken with costume. It would be difficult 
to find any disposition of cloth, from the out-blossom- 
ing of a beggar's coat to the heavy folds of velvet 
and satin, or the fine plaits of linen and lace, that I 
have not on exhibition. Will you walk with me 
and take a mere cursory view ? 

Let us go out the front door into the street. 
There ! see that sad face coming. The artist under- 
took to depict the expression of one who had been 
well bred, whose thoughts and feelings were refined, 
who had for years passed from reverse to reverse; 



MY PICTURE-GALLERY. 887 

by turns sickness, or watchings for the sick ; poverty 
without sordidness ; neglect of friends borne without 
bitterness of spirit ; and at length age with sharp ills 
that cripple the limbs and make walking a slow tor- 
ture. See how gentle and even tranquil the face is ! 
Cheerfulness, patience, and divine trust overlie the 
sharp features, as gold is put along salient edges of 
great rooms to catch the light, and take away a 
sense of heaviness and gloom. Frere never painted 
such a head. It is a noble study, — within and 
without. 

Just beyond, and in admirable contrast, see that 
group of little girls. There are six of them. The 
eldest is ten years old. They are full of life and 
motion. Just a shade of consciousness is falling 
upon them, but no regulated vanity as yet. Their 
hair was well brushed, but the wind has been brush- 
ing it again, as it does leaves and tall grass, into the 
beauty of negligence. Their cheeks are flushed with 
running. Would you see how sweet and loving they 
are ? Let us walk along past them. Here they come, 
running, free, eager, without rudeness. They seize me 
by my hands, by my arms, by my skirts. They look 
up with pretty questions in their mouths and inno- 
cence in their eyes, while one or two, less acquainted 
or more shy, hang just on the edge of the group, 
wistful but unventuresome. I never tire of this pic- 
ture. And such has been the matchless skill of the 
artist that it never looks to me twice alike. 

Walk on. Look down at your feet. Do you see 
those exquisite effects ? The shadows- of leaves and 
branches are cast upon a golden ground of sunlight, 
and, most wonderful in a picture, they move. These 



888 EYES AND EARS. 

long films of shade that shift hither and thither are 
willow spray. They seem like shadows of spirits. 
How unlike the rigid forms and positive motion of 
the leaves of the linden, or fern-leaved ailanthus, that 
much-abused, beautiful tree. Tliis is an endless pic- 
ture. Walk where you may, and as long as you 
will, filmy shadows, mottled with gold, move in a 
dreamy maze upon the cold, gray stones. We walk 
on pictures. The most delicate etchings, the most 
exquisite pencil-sketches, cannot compare with these 
leagues of frescoes under foot. 

Stop. Look up at that window. Set as in a frame is 
a child's face, looking for some expected father, and 
just behind the young mother. They do not know 
what a rare picture they form. Neither do others. 
For, while half behind a tree, to shield my curiosity 
and interest, I look at them and at the passers-by, 
scarcely one looks up, and then but a single glance ; 
and yet Reynolds never composed so sweet a figure, 
in such exquisite color, with sucli beautiful expression. 
Notice, by the curbstone yonder, that German woman 
with a cart drawn in part by two dogs. The hand- 
cart is full of half-burnt coal and cinders. What 
grizzly dogs, fierce and harsh to every strange comer ; 
but how lovingly do they spring and tug to reach their 
mistress as she comes out, dusty, grimed, weather- 
tanned, with her fragments of fuel ! And she ! Five 
hundred people will go past her, and she will not know 
it. She is as separate from this crowd of life as if she 
were a carved stone, or a growing tree. Her thoughts 
and theirs have no more acquaintance than have the 
birds in the air with the fish in the sea. And yet 
there is a voice at home that will call out to her, and, 



MY PICTURE-GALLERY. 389 

with strange resurrection, up from this hard exterior 
will come the glow, the love, the yearning sympathy 
of motherhood ! In tlie streets, dogs, dirt, and wo- 
man ; in the house, mother and babe ! and the dif- 
ference is that of before and after resurrection ! 

Here go the misses to school ! In twos and threes 
the street is lighted up with faces and beautiful 
colors ! If I were a rich man, I would build a 
mansion, and have never less than a thousand chil- 
dren under care. To pass the age of twelve should 
be the fault for which expulsion should be visited. 
But there falls a broad shadow on the street. Look 
up. It is one of those unfolding banks of white, full 
of lines and cinctures of gray. Is it a tabernacle 
holding spirits within ? Or is it some island floated 
off from ethereal realms ? Or is this a caravan such as 
move through the highways of the air, freighted with 
treasures to some provincial star, in which odors and 
essences have given out ? The shadow moves slowly 
down the street, colors fade out, the tracing of leaves on 
the path is effaced, grays gain ground and white van- 
ishes, until that yellow flood behind, following close, 
pours the tide of sunlight again on all the street ! 

There moves a funeral, — twenty carriages; and, 
except in the first, all seem to take a cheerful view 
of death — in others. The sexton and undertaker is 
in his glory. He rides in front, as if he returned in 
triumph from the war. To him death means • fees, 
gloves, scarfs, and a spectacle arranged in the very 
best taste for grief. Vanity and money go up to the 
very gates of immortality. The doctor had professional 
curiosity in the act of death ; the nurse is vain of 
t^e number whom she has laid out, and this is only 



^90 



EYES AND EARS. 



one more ! The man that made the coffin is vain 
of the work ; the sexton is vain of the whole job ; the 
grave-digger looks with complacent eye on the grave, 
dug, he assures you, better than by any other op- 
erator in that line, and in half the time. There was 
much meaning in the Apostle's sentence, " It is sown 
in corruption and in dishonor and in darkness." 

Here comes a nurse, with a plump babe in a little 
carriage, — another sort of procession, from death to 
life this is going. Five steps behhid, the young 
mother, herself fair and but a girl ; yet would you 
please her? Look at her child, and look again. 

But you grow tired of looking at pictures ? Well, 
it is tiresome. There are too many for once. Let 's 
go back, forget what we have seen, look on some paint 
and canvas, and be filled with enthusiasm ! For men 
admire men and their works more than God and his 
works. It is but a part of human egotism. 



FAIRY MUSIC. 




MOSQUITO has an intense individuality. 
Others of insects there are that love plun- 
der, that will shed blood to secure their 
ends, that are prowlers in the night. But 
this only of all these adventurers commits indecent 
depredations under the color of the Fine Arts. 

Gnats, fleas, bed-bugs, chiggers, and other things 
that shall be nameless, make a business of supplying 
their hunger, without refinement, without the accon\- 



FAIEY MUSIC. 891 

paniments of conversation, or any refinements wliatso- 
ever. It is mere appetite. But a mosquito will not 
gorge himself for the sake of eating. He first offers 
you a song. He will exhibit you many feats of dex- 
terity. He is a good gymnast, and nimble enough. 
Your first intimation of his presence is the finest of 
audible sounds, as if he had strung a gossamer upon 
his violin, and was sounding the scale far up in those 
tones which end the earthly scale and join on to the 
ethereal sounds too fine for gross mortal ears. It 
draws nearer. It is not a dull monotone. His swift 
flight and a habit of excursion give to his music the 
variable and intermitting effects noticed in an ^olian 
harp, — now loud, now soft, now near, and now far 
distant. It is this variety, among other things, that 
gives such effect to his music. Many persons that 
do not listen to common music listen instantly when- 
ever they hear his. Persons without^ any natural 
musical ear can detect to a nicety every note of this 
airy musician, and often he sets them to beating time 
for him. 

Some have supposed that the mosquito was of a 
devout turn, and never would partake of a meal with- 
out saying "grace ; but that can hardly be, so long is 
the ceremony, unless he be imagined a Puritan, ad- 
dicted to excessive length of service. Others suppose 
him a gallant, out on a serenade, singing gayly to 
some fair one ; or some roysterer, returning home 
from too convivial a meeting, and singing ditties and 
snatches as he goes. But no one who will examine 
this gentle creature can hold these theories. He is 
spare, which indicates temperate habits. He is slight 
and slender, and may be a little vain of his figure ; 



892 EYES AND EARS. 

but the sober gray of his dress shows that he is not 
a vain beau. 

I am, upon profound meditation, satisfied that the 
mosquito has a natural voice ; that, like the nightin- 
gale and whippoorwill, he sings of preference at 
niglit ; and that blood-sucking is but an accident, 
while the fine arts are the true aim of his being. The 
great populous world of mosquitos never touch meats. 
They are born to vegetable juices. They are a refined 
and tiny species of vegetarians. 

We all know that a mosquito is born in the water. 
He is not of a turbulent disposition, and does not 
affect unquiet waters, but still pools and stagnant res- 
ervoirs. Here he first appears as a horizontal wrig- 
gler. Shortly he mounts to the surface, to see if he 
can in some way get ashore. In lack of better means, 
he strips off his skin, tucks it under him as a float, 
pulls out from their folds a nice pair of wings, for 
which he had no use when under water, and holds 
them up to dry in the sim. This is the crisis of his 
being. Before he got at his wings, before he stript 
off his water-proof garments, he was nowhere so much 
at home as in the water. But now, while he is sailhig 
on its surface with his skin-boat under him, should a 
puff of wind upset him, alHs over. The element that 
nourished him an hour before would now drown him. 
His whole success in life depends upon a still and 
dry hour, in which to get ^lis legs stretched and his 
wings ironed out. But once let him rise, and now 
" the world is all before him where to choose '' ! His 
first preference, next of course to music, is vegetable 
juice. He banquets on the sap of tender herbaceous 
stems. He seeks the shadows of underbrush, of 



FAIRY MUSIC. 393 

weedy nooks, of forests ; and here, for the most part, 
he passes his tranquil life in airy music. 

As there are some adventurers even in the most 
moral societies, so there are some restless mosquitos, 
who disdain advice, breaking from tlie traditions and 
customs of the fathers, and wander into by and forbid- 
den paths. Such enter houses without leave, go 
without knocking into chambers, and spy out other 
people's business. But, even then, a mosquito cannot 
forget the elegance of his native tastes. His flute, if 
it be a flute that he blows, or viol, if it be stringed 
music that we nightly hear, is his constant compan- 
ion. Some rude and indiscriminating people have 
called him the pirate of the night. Whenever did a 
pirate preface his deeds of blood with music ? No. 
My own impression is, that the mosquito comes on a 
serenading errand. He brings you music. It is be- 
nevolence, it is a love of harmonious numbers, that 
inspires him. And yet old harpers, after tlieir strains, 
expected a full cup of ruby wine. And our tiny 
singer, being thirsty, alights upon the first succulent 
thing to slake his thirst. But that is a mere accident. 
That, after drawing blood, they may be perverted, I 
do not deny. There is much blood in the world tliat 
would turn the head of stronger creatures than mos- 
quitos. 

But, my dear Mr. Bonner, mosquitos cannot be 
treated fitly without some allusion to the conduct of 
persons visited by them. Admit that they are dis- 
agreeable ; what do you think they would say of us^ 
were they to write for the Ledger? Let my next 
take up this subject again. Do you object to mosqui- 
tos in the Ledger ? 

17* 



894 



EYES AND EARS. 



MOSQUITOS. No. 2. 




The night is sul- 



HE day has been too hot. 
try. You are nervous and restless. No 
place so good as the bed, and to the cham- 
ber you repair, hoping soon to lose all 



remembrance of your cares and troubles in sleep. 
The light is extinguished, and you resign yourself 
to the pleasing sensations of approaching rest. When 
lo ! a thin, piercing sound salutes you ! It needs no 
interpretation. It is a mosquito come a-serenading. 
Is there any trumpet that can wake a nervous man 
more quickly or more entirely ? Every sense is 
attent. Now the sound comes near, now recedes, 
now it is lost. It soon comes again, and, watching 
your opportunity, you give yourself a broad slap 
upon the face, hoping that the mosquito shared it 
with you ! For a moment he seems dead. You 
experience a minute satisfaction of petty revenge. 
But soon the inevitable sound comes again, but with 
a hither and thither motion. You are acutely atten- 
tive. This time, to make sure, your hand is disen- 
gaged, and lies outside of the coverlet, ready for a 
surprising blow. He alights. You feel his delicate 
touch upon your forehead. Quicker than winking, 
your hand follows him with such a slap as makes 
the room echo. But he is quicker than you are, 
and besides, sees in darkness much better. He is 
off like a sprite, and sings and pipes in a distant cor- 
ner. By this time you are quite excited, — you dis- 
course : " The thief (some men put naughty adjec- 



MOSQUITOS. 395 

tives before the noun), if he would hold his peace 
and come and eat his fill, and be off, he should be 
welcome. But the intolerable piping is worse than 
a surgeon's lancet." Suppose, mj friend, that you 
should get up, light tlie gas, hunt for him ! You 
liad better close tlie blinds, for, however suitable 
your condition may be in itself considered, yet, if 
seen from a neighbor's window, a night-capped man 
in search of a mosquito, at twelve at night, en dis- 
habille, must subject himself to some ridicule. There, 
now, return to your work. You cannot find him? 
After all, perhaps that last slap did the business for 
him. It certainly did for you. See how red your 
much-abused face is ! "Why not let him take a little 
blood out of it ? It would be improved. 

The hero returns to his couch, and the tiny foe 
returns to the hero. Again the horn sounds, again 
he strikes out at him., and again misses. At length, 
tired out, the victim falls asleep. The little trum- 
peter draws near and sounds a challenge. He cir- 
cuits all about, and sings every note in his serenade. 
At length he alights upon a chosen spot, and hav- 
ing satisfied his hunger, retires to some dark corner, 
overswollcn, to collapse and die. 

All this would not be worth telling but for its 
application. I see on every hand men engaged in 
beating themselves on account of fears, cares, frets, 
and petty annoyances. 

The mother sits by her child slightly ill. She 
imagines all possible evils, — she torments herself for 
hours and days at possible, but improbable results. 
It is a mosquito game. The real evil is petty, and 
if quietly taken would soon cease of itself. But she 



896 EYES AND EARS. 

must punish herself by every ingenious imagination. 
Love has its mosquitos. How many sounds does 
jealousy hear. How many dreads does anxious love 
breed. How many nameless fears, and how many 
" what ifs.'* 

Much of the anxiety of business is mere mosquito- 
hunting. When I see a man pale and anxious, not 
for what has .happened, but for what may happen, I 
say, " Strike your own face, do it again, and keep 
doing it, for there is nothing else to hit.'* 

Everybody has his own mosquitos, that fly by night 
or bite by day. There are few men of nerves firm 
enough to calmly let them bite. Most men insist 
upon flagellating themselves for the sake of not hit- 
ting their- troubles. 



?^" 


■>r^ 


(^ 


^ 


te 


m 



BOOK-KEEPING. 

OMEBODY has sent to me a very nice book 
on Book-heeping, And no book could have 
been more timely. There is no other point 
on which I have a more lively interest than 
that of keeping books. In fact, I have found it very 
difficult to get them, and still more difficult to keep 
them. There seems to be no conscience formed as to 
book theft. It is doubtful whether any indictment 
could be made to lie against a man for such an act as 
borrowing and keeping your book. It is rather a 
mark of confidence. He thus says, " Ah, he is my 
friend, and he will not expect me to carry the book 



BOOK-KEEPING. 397 

again to him. When he wants it he will come after 
it. We always have things in common." Pencils, 
umbrellas, canes, and books are not property. They 
cannot be appropriated by one man as owner. They 
belong to the category in which is included air, light, 
water, and fire ; who wants them may have them. I 
will not say that this is yet the written law. It is the 
common law. 

Books ? The only bodies are they for noble spirits, 
that have no ailments or annoyances. Books talk to 
you, not through the ear, but another way. They 
shout their silent meaning at the soul through the 
eye. They never importune, and are never reluctant. 
They are always full without eating. They are still, 
but never sleep. They • grow old without infirmity. 
They are neither sick nor weary ; they outwatch the 
watcher, and greet the morning, and wait for the stars 
at evening. For every other guest we make a couch 
and spread a table. But strange are the manners of 
books and pictures, that bring rest to our pertur- 
bations, and are guests that perform all the offices of 
hospitality for the host. 

Why should they be singled out for theft ? When 
my spoons disappear, there is at least a pleasure in 
saying, " A thief has got them." But even that pleas- 
ure is denied me when books appear no more. 

Once there came an artist with letters of renown 
from a friend. He needed help. A fine copy had I 
of " Stuart's Athens," uncut, large paper, early im- 
pressions. So gladly and greedily did he devour the 
matter therein, that I was beguiled, tempted of the 
Devil, to offer to let him take the precious volumes 
to his room, the better to ease his tasks and help his 



898 - EYES AND EARS. 

toil. He took them. He thanked me much, and his 
face glowed. The volumes were large — three — and 
heavy ; — they ought to be, since they had the Par- 
thenon in them, and the whole Acropolis, and many 
temples to boot. He went, they went, four years 
went, and he never returned, nor have the books 
returned ! They are gone ! That thief of an artist 
— I sigh for revenge. Could I have and hold him, 
he should he shut up in a book-case for indefinite 
years, and be sentenced to read Tupper or Wise's 
Letters. No. I relent. Not the last. Punishments 
may be severe, but should never be cruel. 

How many first volumes are gone ? What is a 
widowed volume ? that they would take the set 
if they will take any ! The surprise of their " taking 
off" comes to you too iit unexpecting moments. You 
are discussing with a* friend of some matter ; there 
is illustration or proof in Kugler's Handbook. You 
run for it, and then first learn that it is gone ! That 
gem from Didot's press, — all that you know of it is, 
it was here, it is not here, and it never will be here. 
That last clause is the result of long experience. If 
a book is poor, it is not worth the trouble of return- 
ing ; if good, it is too valuable to be returned. 

When we are Pope, we intend to make great 
changes in the Creeds and Articles. Stealing books, 
i. e. borrowing them, shall be put among the mortal 
sins, and private revenge upon stealers of books shall 
be venial, under a very slight tariff. 

Then, when we are Emperor, we intend, every year, 
to require each man in the empire who can read and 
write, to make solemn search of his household, and to 
file an affidavit that there is not remaining with him 



BOOK-KEEPING. 399 

a borrowed book ! Thus I would reinstate tlie old 
Jubilee ; only for men, it was once in seven, and once 
in fifty years : but for books it should come as often 
as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's come ! 

My dear Mr. Bonner, you will now understand 
how delighted I was to perceive that this subject was 
attracting attention and that treatises were written 
upon it. " Book-Keeping- " — for schools, too, it says. 
That 's beginning at the right place ! I have not read 
the book yet ; but any attempt to rectify this great 
•evil of books that cannot be kept must do good. I 
commend them to Sabbath schools. " Practical Book- 
keeping." Admirable theme ! Much-needed reform! 
"Embracing," saith the cover, " single and double 
entry." This is obscure. " Entry ? " does this refer 
to the act of enterhig once and twice for books ? 
Why limit it to single and double ; why not say ten 
and twenty times entry ? Men that will take one 
volume would take twenty if they could ; if they 
come once, they come twenty times. 

But perhaps this is explained in the book. I shall 
read it soon. No doubt it will be another excellent 
moral aid to weak consciences. The work that will 
teach me Book-keeping, will do what nothing has 
done before. I cannot keep money. I cannot keep 
books. Blessed is he that shall teach me how ! 



400 EYES AND EARS. 



SPEAKING-HALLS. 




AEGE rooms, or halls, for public meetings 
are not to be regarded merely as convenien- 
ces ; they are institutions of instruction. 
And that quite independently of the mere 
knowledge that is dispensed in them. Our system of 
government demands of its people the habit of confer- 
ence^ of frequent assembly for consideration of com- 
mon interests. Whatever tends to luring people to- 
gether in peaceable ways, to elicit their thoughts, to 
move them with common sentiments, or to inspire 
tliem, even for an hour, with feelings common to them 
all, alike and together, confers a great benefit. It is 
on this account that convenient and inviting public 
halls are a means of education. They furnish also 
places of entertainments, for fairs, social assemblies, 
for the meethigs of societies, lodges, and associations. 
Whatever brings our people peaceably together does 
them good. In our climate, and with our national 
habits, the open air meetings of Southern Europe, the 
fetes-champetres^ cannot be expected, and provision 
must be made under shelter. 

Churches and town-halls were the earliest provisions 
for popular gatherings. Pleasure next opened ball- 
rooms and concert-rooms. But it is to the lecture 
system that we are indebted more than to any other 
influence for the rapid progress made within ten years 
in building spacious and elegant public halls. Ten or 
Sfteen years ago, and, except in a few of the principal 
cities, no hall could be found which would now be 



SPEAKING-HALLS. 401 

deemed respectable. Now, in all the larger towns, 
and in many villages even, we find large and conven- 
ient audience-rooms. And much more attention is 
every year bestowed upon warming, lighting, and ven- 
tilating them. As yet but few answer all the prime 
conditions of a good hall. These indispensable condi- 
tions are, — strength of structure, ease of entrance and 
exit, abundance of light, that yet does not dazzle the 
eyes, the means of regulating the temperature, good 
speaking qualities, and, lastly, but eminently, ventila- 
tion. 

It is simply a piece of wantonness to build an en- 
trance-way so small that, upon alarm of fire, the 
audience could not easily clear the hall without crush- 
ing and trampling each other. In no other thing is 
economy more culpable. Every hall should have an 
exit and vomitory at each end, and, if large enough to 
hold two thousand people, there should be side open- 
ings also. Even in times without alarm, the jamming 
and pushing of people wedged together in narrow 
passages is an outrage, not only upon convenience, but 
upon propriety. It ought to be made a matter of leg- 
islation. The law should require a definite relation 
between the containing power of the hall and the pas- 
sages and vomitories. 

The lighting needs less reformation, since in all 
large rooms gas is introduced. But much improve- 
ment may take place in the disposition of the flame. 
When the jets are lifted up toward the ceiHng, ar- 
ranged either along the cornice or in central clusters, 
with suitable openings for the passing off of heat and 
;moke, they afford the most agreeable light. But 
when this cannot be done, all strong lights at the end 

z 



402 EYES AND EARS. 

where the speaker stands should be avoided. They 
are a source of great suffering to many, and of annoy- 
ance to all. 

It is the practice, frequently, to place on the lec- 
turer's desk an Argand lamp, or a camphene lamp, or 
other intense flame, as if the only thing required was, 
light enough. These glaring and intense lights put 
out the speaker's eyes, and the hearers' too. THey 
are intolerable. It is literally true, that they prevent 
one's seeing his manuscript ; for, by dazzling the eye, 
and heating the head, they produce indistinctness of 
vision. The best of all lights are simply a pair of 
sperm candles I They give abundance of light, they 
throw it just where you need it, they do not blear the 
speaker's eyes, nor dazzle the audience ; they require 
no snuffing, can be moved easily, and may be pro- 
cured in any village. 

Of ventilation we almost despair. What good will 
words do, when stench, stupidity, fainting, and half- 
suffocation do not avail ? Only this week, on the 10th 
of December, we spoke in the hall of one of our best 
old New England towns, where every person in the 
room was poisoned by the foul air. Nothing fresh 
could get in, and nothing foul could get out. It has 
been so for several years, and will continue to be so. 
People in other things sensible, and public-spirited, 
seem to be infatuated on this subject. Bad air seems 
to be, if not a luxury, a necessary of life. 

Even when ventilation is attempted, it is often with 
an ignorance that is ludicrous. We once were gravely 
pointed by a committee-man to the efforts made for 
ventilating a hall capable of holding twelve hundred 
people. And what was it ? A round hole not above 



CONVEKSATIONAL FAULTS. 



403 



eiglit inches in diameter ! This was expected to 
change the air for twelve hundred people. 

Perhaps, at another time, we will mention some of 
the best speaking-halls in the country. 



CONVERSATIONAL FAULTS. 




VERY child is early admonished of the rude- 
ness of interrupting a person while speak- 
ing. But why this caution should be con- 
fined to children we cannot imagine. Their 
rudeness is the least provoking of any. It is the 
exhibitions that we meet in genteel society that mar 
our comfort most and excite our surprise. And 
among adults we learn to be patient with impetuous 
natures, whose strong and ungoverned feelings, touched 
by some spark in your words, go off like bombs, past 
all power of restraint. 

But the aggravated offenders are those who inter- 
ject your conversation with comments and hints, or 
vexatious corrections, or meddling smartness, and so 
take from you all pleasure of fluency. Just as you 
are coming to the nub of a story, they quietly drop a 
sentence which tells the whole, and leave you with 
only the mortifying remnants. Is it a jest that is 
loaded and in your hand ? They slyly step behind 
you and pull the trigger, leaving you empty as an 
exploded gun-barrel. 

Sometimes a single word, like a drop of ink in a 
tumbler of water, will change the color of a whole 



404 EYES AND EARS. 

statement. You cannot repel it, nor answer it, for 
it attacks nothing, says nothing positively, but only 
fixes in the mind certain suggestions. 

There is an inflection of this evil, equally vexatious. 
It is when a shrewd lip comments in your ear, whis- 
peringly, or aside, upon the remarks or address to 
which you are listening. It may be that you are not 
of a retentive countenance. A ludicrous word, dropped 
just right, sets you into a laugh, irresistible just in 
proportion to its impoliteness. You seem to mock 
the person speaking, while the arch-whisperer sits 
demurely, without blame, as innocent as a dove. 

Yet less bearable are the comments of conceited 
persons, upon some performance to which you wish 
to give your attention. While a symphony is per- 
forming, they interpolate it ; " Sublime," " Fine, very 
fine, don't you thhik so ? " " Rather dull, that." Dur- 
ing a discourse they are perpetually setting their 
remarks upon your ears, bringing you back to con- 
sciousness, and to contempt. They sing in your ears 
like mosquitos, they ahght upon you as flies in sum- 
mer-days, only you are debarred the pleasure of aim- 
ing a good slap at them. It is seriously to be con- 
sidered whether this is not a case where a hearty box 
on the ear would not be entirely proper, moral, and 
reformatory ? 

But there is another rudeness which, if less fre- 
quent, is equally annoying. It is the rudeness of 
the talker and not of the interrupter. Many will 
ask you a question and answer it themselves ; they 
will find fault with you, and race forward with re- 
marks so as to prevent any explanation ; nay, they 
will aggravate the matter by putting stupid replies 



CONVEKSATIONAL FAULTS. 405 

into your mouth, and then answering them. " Don't 
speak, — I know what you are going to say, — but it 
is not so, for," — &c., <fec. 

Many persons have a very cool way of seeing what 
you think, and insisting upon it ; — they saw it in 
your eyes, or in your face, and will permit no denial. 
Sometimes you are caught upon a turbulent stream 
of talk which sweeps you down in the most ludicrous 
way. You are whirled round, and soused, and over- 
whelmed with the rushing talk, which you cannot 
answer or get rid of or modify. At a table, or in 
car or boat, a man of opposite politics pours at you 
for a half-hour, misstating your position, charging 
you with all manner of absurdities, exaggerating 
facts, and abusing you and your friends and your 
party, and all the world generally, while you are 
like a man bemg played on by a fire-engine, — dish- 
evelled, soused, half-smothered, and rolled up into a 
ridiculous heap. 

Ought not some mark to be put upon such men, to 
warn every one of their danger ? We mark danger- 
ous places on the highway ; we put up a sign on a 
broken bridge ; we warn people from a dangerous 
ford. And yet these are lesser dangers ! Why should 
not men wear some badge significant of their propen- 
sities ? We put buttons on oxen's horns as a hint. 
We put a board on a cow's face intimating her dan- 
gerous propensity ; we put a shackle or a poke upon 
a horse that is addicted to extending the area of 
his freedom. Why not put signs upon dangerous 
people ? 



406 EYES AND EARS. 



BOOTS. 




HE difference between 7 and 8 is not very 
great ; only a single unit. And yet that 
difference has power over a man's whole 
temper, convenience, and dignity. At Buf- 
falo, my boots were set out at night to be blacked. 
In the morning no boots were there, though all the 
neighboring rooms had been served. I rang. I 
rang twice. *' A pretty hotel, — nearly eight o'clock, 
going out at nine, breakfast to be eaten, and no boots 
yet." The waiter came, took my somewhat emphatic 
order, and left. Every minute was an hour. It 
always is when you are out of temper. A man in his 
stocking-feet, in the third story of a hotel, finds him- 
self restricted in locomotion. I went to the door, 
looked up and down the hall, saw frowzy chamber- 
maids ; saw, afar off, the master of the coal-scuttle ; 
saw gentlemen walking in bright boots, unconscious 
of the privileges which they enjoyed, but did not see 
any one coming with my boots. A German servant 
at length came, round and ruddy-faced, very kind and 
good-natured, honest and stupid. He informed me 
that a gentleman had already taken boots No. 78 (my 
number). He would kunt him up ; thought he was 
breakfasting. Here was new vexation. Who was 
the man that had taken my number and gone for my 
boots. Somebody had them on, warm and nice, and 
was enjoying his coffee, while I walked up and down, 
with less and less patience, who had none too much 
at first. No servant returned. I rang again, and 



BOOTS. 407 

sent energetic and staccato messages to the office. 
Some water had been spilled on the floor. I stepped 
in it, of course. In winter cold water feels as if it 
burned you. Unpacked my valise for new stockings. 
Time was speeding. It was quarter past eight ; train 
at nine, no boots and no breakfast. I slipped on a 
pair of sandal-rubbers, too large by inches for my 
naked foot, and while I shuffled along the hall, they 
played up and down on my feet. First, one shot off; 
that secured, the other dropped on the stairs ; people 
that I met looked as if they thought that I was not 
well over a last night's spree. It was very annoying. 
Reached the office, and expressed my mind. First 
the clerk rang the bell three times furiously, then ran 
forth himself, met the German boots, who had boots 
79 in hand, narrow and long, thinking perhaps I 
could wear them. Who knows but 79 had my boots ? 
Some curiosity was beginning to be felt among by- 
standers. It was likely that I should have half the 
hotel inquiring after my boots. I abhor a scene. 
Retreated to my room. On the way thought that I 
would look at room 77's boots. Behold, they were 
mine ! There was the broken pull-straps ; the patch 
on the right side, and the very shape of my toe, — in- 
fallible signs ! The fellow had marked them 77 and 
not 78. And all this hour's tumult arose from just 
the difference between 7 and 8. 

I lost my boots, lost the train, lost my temper, and, 
of course, lost my good manners. Everybody does 
that loses temper. But, boots once on, breakfast 
served, a cup of coffee brought peace and good-will. 
The whole matter took a ludicrous aspect. I moral- 
ized upon that infirmity that puts a man's peace at 



408 EYES AND EARS. 

the mercy of a Dutchman's chalk. Had he written 
seventy-eight, I had been a good-natured man, look- 
ing at Niagara Falls in its winter dress. He wrote 
seventy-seven, and I fumed, saw only my own falls, 
and spent the day in Buffalo ! 

Are not most of the pets and rubs of life as undig- 
nified as this ? Few men could afford to-morrow to 
review the things that vexed them yesterday. We 
boast of being free, yet every man permits the most 
arrant trifles to rule and ride him. A man that is 
vexed and angry turns the worst part of himself out 
to sight, and exhibits himself to the pity or contempt 
of spectators. Who would put on a buffoon's coat 
and fool's cap and walk forth to be jeered ? And yet 
one's temper does worse by him than that. And men 
submit to it, not once, but often, and sometimes every 
day ! I wonder whether these sage reflections will 
make me patient and quiet the next time my boots 
are misplaced ? 



COMPLIMENTS. 




OW far may one consistently with truth and 
honor employ compliments in his intercourse 
with society ? This question requires us 
to fix the meaning of a compliment. Is it 
anything different from flattery ? Flattery may be 
given by means of a compliment, and yet there are 
many compliments that are true, well deserved, and 
sincere. Both compliment and flattery belong to the 
element oi praise. Every one holds that it is right 



COMPLIMENTS. 409 

to praise, if it be rightly done. But when one is 
praised for things not meritorious, or which the person 
has not performed, or for qualities not possessed, or 
when the praise is out of proper proportion to desert 
or fact, it is flattery. And yet this does not hit the 
precise moral element that determines it. Violation 
or exaggeration of the truth of facts may be an in- 
discretion only. It must be done intentionally, it 
must be done insincerely, and for a purpose. Flattery 
is praise insincerely given for an interested purpose. 

A compliment is usually praise delivered in some 
unexpected and beautiful form. A compliment is 
praise in an art-form. It may be a mere intimation ; 
a graceful comparison, an illusion, or an inference 
made or implied. It is praise crystallized. It bears 
about the relation to praise that proverbs do to formal 
philosophy, or that form does to poetry. 

Compliments may then be Christianly honest. Sev- 
eral exquisite instances are to be found in St. Paul's 
letters and speeches. That men employ them deceit- 
fully, flatteringly, afibrds no just reason against a 
sincere and honest use of them. On the contrary, 
there is all the more need of showing by their wise 
use that a perversion is unnecessary. 

But there is a benevolence in compliments. It 
tempts one to look for agreeable traits among his 
friends, and not for faults. There is among the young 
of our time an impression that caustic and critical 
things are smart and genteel. It is supposed that 
dashing wit, unscrupulous cuts, and sometimes an 
abrupt and rude demeanor, are signs of gentlemanly 
freedom. This is a sad declension from the polished 
and kind gentilities of former schools of good manners. 

18 



410 EYES AND EARS. 

Bui a habit of saying agreeable things in an elegant 
v^ay, if it does not degenerate into falseness, will work 
benefit upon the speaker ; sweetening his mind, turn- 
ing him back from bitter and hateful things, and in- 
clining him to the way of kindness. It will confer 
great pleasure on the object, since nothing can be 
more agreeable in the minor scenes of life than sud- 
denly to receive praise for well-doing, in a form that 
pleases at once both the moral sense and the taste. 
A man, however, must be kind, of good taste, and 
thoroughly honest, to use compliments without danger 
— to himself. 



SMELL AND PERFUMERY. 




HE sense of smell is perhaps the lowest of 
the senses. Its range is least of all its im- 
portance and its pleasures. It would be a 
curious problem to determine the relative 
amount of pleasure which men derive from the em' 
or eye. Upon the ear is based the science of music ;, 
upon the eye the fine arts of painting, sculpture, &c 
By the eye we derive all pleasures of form, color, pro- 
portion ; by the ear come the delights of converse,- 
the benefit of discourse, the pleasure of music. 

There is no such range to the sense of taste. With 
this sense is connected the whole sustenance of h;iman 
life. It is by food that the body is every day rebuilt, 
and tasting has much to do with food. But, as com- 
pared with these major senses, smell has but a limited 
function. And, as the world is constituted, it is 



SlIELL AND PERFUMERY. 411 

doubtful whether we do not derive as much pain as 
pleasure from the sense of smell. 

Civilization or barbarism are alike full of bad odors. 
Nature for the most part is sweet-smelling. When it 
is considered that universal death is followed by con- 
tinuous decay, in the animal and vegetable worlds, 
it is surprising that there is so little evil odor in 
the air. The woods are fragrant, the fields are of a 
wholesome smell. Whatever decays is soon resolved 
to inodorous elements, and the exhaling gas is swept 
off into the great purifier, — the atmosphere of the 
globe. 

If one lives in the country, it is his own fault if 
his nose is not at peace with all things. Winter is 
pure and inodorous. Summer is full of balmy leaves, 
sweet-smelling fruits, and perfumed flowers, and a 
man may surround his dwelling with beds of fragrant 
plants that shall fill his house with pleasure which- 
ever way the wind blows. 

But what can we do in cities ? In the first place, 
it is almost impossible to keep our dwelling sweet. 
Even if the sewers work, the kitcheji does too. Three 
times a day we have our food sent up in a spiroteal 
form. However good a mixed dinner may taste, it 
seldom smells agreeably in the parlor. Coffee smells 
gratefully even from afar, and better and better till 
smell is lost in taste. But ham and eggs, waffles, 
griddle-cakes, send up a faint, greasy stench through 
all the house, — pah! 

Then comes gas. Can human imagination conceive 
of odor more utterly abominable ? And yet how few 
dwellings have not a leak somewhere ? In June come 
worms. The whole air reeks with sickening, vermic- 



412 EYES AND EARS. 

ular stench. No sooner does this begin to abate be- 
fore the ailanthus-tree sheds its heavy, noisome odor 
tliat fills the streets and penetrates the dwelling past 
all escape. 

But what shall be said of a human being that, 
amid all these grievances, deliberately adds to the 
army of stenches that of voluntary perfumes ? Under 
the plea of pleasing smells, men and women contrive 
to fill their hair, their dress, their handkerchiefs, with 
all manner of odors except agreeable ones. The hair 
is rancid with bear's grease, with ox-marrow, with 
pomatum, with named and unnamed oils, and they 
all stink! 

Every time the handkerchief comes forth, a gust 
of musk is wafted into your face, warm, fainting, 
sickening ! There are five hundred named odors, 
more or less, sold in bottles, that are only so many 
different ways of trying to hide the universal smell 
of musk. Is it apple-blossom ? It smells musk. Is 
it mille-fleurs ? It is musk. Is it geranium ? It is 
musk again. Orange smells musk. Violets, helio- 
tropes, roses, fade away to their base, the inevitable 
and universal musk. The gloves smell of it, the silks, 
the whole person seems infested with civets. 

Your worship is almost destroyed in church. One 
smell is before you, another behind you. The odors 
of sanctity are manifold abominations. If you repair 
to the concert-room, the air is polluted and waiting for 
you. Good manners forbid a gentleman to hold his 
nose while talking with a lady drenched with cologne 
or lavender. One may almost recognize his friends as 
dogs do game, by their peculiar odor. Every one 
affects a peculiar smell. We might almost name per- 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 413 

• 

sons by their favorite odor. Miss Yanilla smiles yon- 
der ; next her the charming Miss Orris-root. There 
are several of the Lemon Yerbena family present, and 
yet more of the Lemon family. Then there are the 
Bergamots, the Orange-blossoms, the Bitter Almonds, 
and other old and respectable families. 

Once in a while comes a lady of transcendent good 
taste, wholly inodorous. She does not carry a sandal- 
wood fan. She wears nothing kept in a camphor- 
wood trunk. Her silks have neither been hung in a 
cedar closet, nor been smoked with French pastilles. 
Her gloves smell of kid leather — as they ought to. 
No myrrh, no incense, no nuts, blossoms, fruits, seeds, 
or leaves, have been crushed to yield for her any odor 
of offence. She is pure as water, and as inodorous ; 
as bright as a pearl, and as scentless ; witching as an 
opal, and as devoid of perfume. 0, that she might 
live a thousand years, and be the ancestress of tea 
thousand just like her I 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 




MONO the superstitions of education are 
those in favor of order. It is not that 
there is no such thing as order, but that its 
advocates are bigoted, are narrow and ex- 
clusive. It is coolly taken for granted, that if order 
is good, disorder is bad. As if there might not be 
bad order" and good disorder ! 

If order is Heaven's first law, disorder is at least 



414 EYES AND EARS. 

• 

its second. What is order, as applied, I mean, to 
tilings ? It is simply arrangement according to some 
notion, and disorder is simply arrangement accord- 
ing to some other notion. They might be called pri- 
mary order and secondary order. 

As practice almost always precedes philosophy, so 
already there is to be found the fact of disorder for 
the sake of benefits which cannot be had by despotic 
order. If a parlor is arranged with chairs in rows 
all around the walls, with everything in right lines, 
every one says, how stiff, how intolerable, how little 
taste is manifested! But swing round the lounge in 
the corner, carelessly ; let the chairs be scattered 
about, just as they would be if persons had but now 
used them ; shove the centre table a little out of the 
very middle of the medallion, so that it shall not be 
set^ and then people say the parlor has a social and 
easy air. What is this but a disguised revolt against 
tlie despotism of order ? The same is more remark- 
ably true in gardens and pleasure-grounds. For- 
merly, grounds were arranged by geometric principles. 
Everything was squared and mated. Mathematical 
exactness ruled. Even the figures of geometry were 
copied. The French gardens might bo said to be 
geometry hi blossom. Against this has come up what 
is called the Natural Style. And what is tlie natural 
or picturesque style of landscape gardening ? It aims 
to reproduce the beauty of nature, together with its 
negligence and graceful disorder. It is a system based 
upon the rejection of any absolute rule. It aims to 
arrange thmgs just as they would be if they never 
had been arranged at all. 

These instances are enough to show that the preju- 



THE GOOD OF DISOKDER. 415 

dices which lofty and virtuous housekeepers have 
against disorder are not founded in philosophy, and 
that order is often a mere nuisance. We don't he- 
lieve it to be Heaven's first law ; though we did not, 
for rhetorical effect, choose to say so earlier in this 
article. In so far as it can be made a foil, a back- 
ground, a judicious contrast to disorder, we have no 
doubt it has a place and a function. But it is only a 
path to be trod on the way to graceful disorder. 

The face of Nature is the most obvious and thor- 
ough refutation of the popular superstitions about 
order. Nothing is orderly till man takes hold of it. 
Everything in creation lies around loose, or is mixed 
up in the most inextricable disorder. Not in confu- 
sion. Disorder is never to be confounded with con- 
fusion. If our housekeepers had had the making of 
Nature, the world would have been a vast bureau, 
and every drawer would have had its appropriate 
specimens in lamentable regularity. Here "v^e should 
have had Mineralogy, next Botany, next Zoology, and 
so on, in intolerable order. As it is, thank Nature ! 
things are scattered about all over the world splen- 
didly, and no housekeeper was ever created to put 
this world " to rights." 

We spoke of bureaus. There is our own for in- 
stance. It is a moderately good one, with a mova- 
ble top, and a looking-glass attached. Our way of 
arranging is, to put everything down on the top, just 
as it comes. Hers is just the other way. 

We treat it as we should the globe, and leave things ^ 
just as they dropped. Books, combs, and brushes, a 
fishing-reel, a pamphlet, matches, and lozenges, co- 
logne, and troches, a battle-hyimi and letters, watch- 



416 EYES AND EARS. 

cases, and ribbons. Then one would know where to 
look if anything were missing. Alas! order steps 
up the moment we leave, and this beauteous disorder 
vanishes ! It is distressing to every tender feeling of 
taste to open the first drawer. All is adjusted ; noth- 
ing left to the imagination. Every lace smooth, every 
one folded, flat, regular. So it will be to-morrow, so 
next week, and to the end ! The next drawer is mine. 
There repose the snow-white shirts, the pile of hand- 
kerchiefs ; and they repose like Egyptian dead in rows 
and shelf-like order. Once in a while we thrust in a 
genuine touch of Nature, that is said to make all men 
kin ; but a flatiron does not take a wrinkle out of linen 
quicker than the order does out of the drawer ! And 
so it is with the next, and the next. So is it with the 
closet, with parlor, and entries. The same rectangu- 
lar fate presides in parlor and dining-room. Nay, it 
stealthily creeps into the very study. Let us, in a 
moment rash with desperation, say our soul's faith 
(though it be heresy) that no housekeeper — foreor- 
dained housekeepeer — has any rights in a study. 
Here are we this morning, just returned after four 
days' absence. We left this room a Paradise, we find 
it a Purgatory. Our table was blossoming all over 
with a luxuriant and tangled abundance of letters, 
papers, scraps from newspapers, books, and books on 
books. It was a journal. Each day's deposit for 
weeks was there, almost witli the regularity of geolog- 
ical strata. We could go back as in a register, and 
^recall the topics of each several day, until memory 
failed, and the lower strata of papers, the very primi- 
tive formations, went back to dim and remote times 
inexplorable. Like an onion or tulip-bulb, the table 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 417 

was constnicted in layers. Fatal absence ! Misplaced 
confidence! We returned to find everything death- 
struck. All was order ! Our articles sorted, our let- 
ters filed, our scraps classified, our pens collected and 
huddled like raw recruits in awkward squads, the 
scissors, the knife, the pins, the ink, the mucilage, 
standing round like officers dressed for a parade-day. 
A month will not suffice to bring back again the ad- 
mired disorder, the graceful melange. 

And then the books ! 

Mr. Bonner, — you have a kind nature, a genuine, 
sympathizing heart. Every one has seen how heartily 
you stand up for your friends, how heartily you 
thwack your adversaries. But even you cannot con- 
sole us nor avenge us of our adversary ! She steals 
in ! She views the happy scene ! There was Baylo 
lying on the floor, with Mape's Farmer in his lap, and 
an Atlas genially covering both. There was a squad- 
ron of Living Ages lying around, like a picket of 
cavalry at ease. In one corner was a thicket of 
newspapers, on the sofa a ream of paper, a shawl, 
an Afifghan, a Concordance, a Bible, new books uncut, 
magazines, and various other treasures ; near the win- 
dow all the books that at various times for a month 
we had bought up, but had not put up, waiting till 
we had time to arrange ; near the door a stack of 
portfolios, and here and there a picture, patiently 
waiting to be hung. The book-cases were in benevo- 
lent sympatliy with the floor. Indeed, the book-case 
might be called a vertical floor, and the floor a 
horizontal book-case. Whichever way the eye turned 
it found unexpected contrasts. Nothing was tame. 
Everything was fitted to excite surprise in a well- 
is * A A 



418 EYES AND EARS. 

regulated housekeeper's mind. It was a stimulating 
siglit. No art could have designedly arranged it. 
It was the workmanship of distributive and gradual 
chance. Like frostwork on the window, it defied 
invention and challenged imitation. 

The same remorseless hand that would rub out a 
windowful of frost etchings, for the sake of seeing 
vulgar things outside, has invaded our room and 
" put everything to rights." Two months of indus- 
trious carelessness will scarce suffice to bring back my 
paradise ! And all the time that fatal fear will over- 
liang us that, in an unguarded hour, the same calamity 
will sweep through the room again, and where it 
found all, everything in disorder and loneliness, leave 
everything blasted with regularity and order ! 

But ah, the days are coming ! But seven days is 
it to Spring! Tlien in one more month, — and all 
our ills will be healed. We sliall send everybody to 
the country. We shall bo sole monarch. Tlien, 
descending, we shall overturn the despotism of the 
parlors, and bring to the solitude of the house the 
joyful boon of disorder ! We will forget to put 
anything in its place. The sofa shall sprout with 
strange things. Every corner be planted with new 
commodities. The book-case door shall never be shut. 
The chairs shall never have less than half a dozen 
hooks. Engravings shall lie in heaps. Riglit in the 
midst of manuscripts shall be seen bread and cheese 
and apples that had begun to be eaten ; the ashes 
shall heap itself in gray disorder ; kindling-wood and 
waste paper shall ruffle the hearth; and everything see 
everything doing what it was never expected to do. 
Brooms we hate as we do a tyrant's rod. We will 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 



419 



expel them ! Dust-brushes are an utter abomination. 
We will drive them forth ! At present we think it 
meet to submit. But we snuff the balmy air that 
tells us that the vernal days are coming. To us they 
mean more than to anybody else. To all they mean 
grass, leaves, lambs, birds, flowers, and odorous smell 
of soil and vegetation. But to us they mean also 
domestic liberty, the end of tyrannous order, the res- 
toration of nature to the house, the undisturbed reign 
of joyous disorder! ^ 




Cambridge : Stereotyped and Friated by Welch, Bigelow. & Co. 



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